


A Decadent Habits Christmas

by Darkenning



Series: The Darkenned World [2]
Category: Mahou Sensei Negima!, Mai-HiME
Genre: F/F, F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:38:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 24
Words: 25,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5440364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkenning/pseuds/Darkenning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-four stories about the girls of 3A, their teacher and others, all set on December 24, a few months after the events of "Decadent Habits".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kitty

**Author's Note:**

> Standard issue disclaimer: Akamatsu Ken created and owns Negima. I am not him. This is a parody, protected speech. Thanks to my cowriters and the reviewers.

It was cold when Negi woke up, though he only felt it on his cheeks. The rest of his body was firmly enmeshed in warm blankets, not to mention the arms of an equally warm, soft female form pressed up against his back. He let out a mildly irritated sigh at the realization that she'd done it again. The worst part of it, of course, was that he certainly couldn't criticize her for doing this sort of thing.

Was this what being a parent was like? Well, then, maybe it was good that he was getting in some practice at that by acting _in loco parentis_ for Mas—

For Kitty.

He was still getting used to that, and to much else, as well.

With that thought, he set himself to the task of disentangling the rest of the way from her arms, hopefully without waking her. Unfortunately, that proved to be beyond him, and her green eyes flickered open as he was doing so. Her first conscious sound of the day was a grunt, as those eyes swiveled over to regard the window. She considered the view for a moment before returning her gaze to him. "The sun," she said at last, "is nae risen."

"No, it isn't," Negi agreed as he completed his self-extraction, then unwrapped himself from the blankets. "You should probably try to go back to sleep."

Kitty ignored the suggestion. "Wherefore must ye be out and about, on such a winter's morn as this?"

He sighed as he got free and started to crawl over to the bunkbed's ladder. "You know why. I have to keep up my training."

"Wherefore?" she repeated insistently.

"Because," he answered. Then, to forestall the inevitable comeback, he continued. "If I skip a day, I set myself a bad precedent that will be all too easy to follow. Eventually, I'll find myself looking for reasons to avoid training, even on days that aren't cold and unpleasant. And as a result, I won't be in the best shape possible when a real battle comes. And that would be very bad."

She stared at him as he started climbing down the ladder. Just as he started to entertain thoughts that he might have persuaded her to his views, she spoke up again. "I dinnae like to think of ye in battle."

That was unexpected. Always before, her periodic complaints about his early morning departures had focused on how she didn't like being alone, or even that it was colder in the room without his presence. This was the first time she'd expressed an anxiety on behalf of someone else. He thought that it was probably a good idea to encourage that sort of thing.

"I don't like fighting either," Negi said. And cursed himself for a liar, because there was a part of him, not too well-buried, that exulted in it. "But sometimes, there is no other choice. You either fight or see someone else fighting on your behalf. And for me, at least, the latter is worse. Maybe it's the same with you. Maybe you should join me in training."

Now her stare turned clearly aghast. "Are ye daft? I am a delicate blossom!" And with that, she rolled up in blanket and turned away from him in what he could clearly recognize as a pout.

"Right," he said, and descended to the floor.

The suite of rooms in which he and Kitty now resided had, up until a few months ago, been Takamichi's residence. By the time they moved in, a week or so after everything, there had been nothing left behind to mark it as his. Negi still felt a bit guilty over his friend's dismissal, though he had enough guilt over his other actions and inactions that he didn't feel much need to dwell on his relatively minor role in Takamichi's disgrace. Besides, he suspected that he'd come perilously close to losing his own job in all of that.

 _The problem being,_ he thought gloomily as he dressed, _that I almost wish I had._ If it had just been him ... but, of course, it wasn't. He had responsibilities. His students — his crazy, wonderful students — would have followed him if he'd left, and he cared too much for their welfare to let that happen.

A quick glance outside confirmed that, though the sky was overcast, there was no snow in the air. He nonethless bundled up tightly, complete with the scarf Haruna had given him for his birthday with the words, "Wit beyond measure is life's greatest treasure."

"All right, I'm off, " he announced. "I'll be back later this afternoon. I'd appreciate it if you studied the Japanese lesson we went over last night. And you could use a bath."

"Dinnae like baths, " came a sour-sounding reply.

Negi sighed, not appreciating the irony at all. "In any event, if there's any trouble, please call me on my cell. Or call Chachamaru-san if you can't —"

She cut him off with a disgusted grunt.

"I know you're not comfortable with her, " he continued wearily.

"She's strange!" Kitty protested from the bed where she still lay curled up. "All of these heathen folk are strange, but she's surely strangest of all!"

"She's a good and kind person —" Negi started to say, biting out the words, then reigned in his temper, reminding himself, _again_ , that it wasn't Kitty's fault that she didn't know or understand why Chachamaru would walk through fire for her. "— and very reliable, " he concluded instead.

To this, she made no reply.

"Ittekimasu, " he said.

"Ganbattay koodasigh, " she said back.

He decided to count that as another point of progress, as he went out the door and locked it up behind him.

* * *

_He was mad at me,_ Kitty thought.

She didn't want that. The world was filled with things she didn't want, but least of all did she want to drive away the only person who made her feel safe in it. But everything that came naturally to her seemed to do it.

 _Daft world,_ she thought wearily, and closed her eyes to try and find a sleep that wouldn't bring her dreams of the castle, and the scent of the lilacs in its garden. All just dreams, she'd been told again and again. And yet, oh, how the scent of them lingered ...


	2. Mana

In the handful of times when he'd been able to have a sit-down talk with a fellow battle-mage, he'd usually sounded out their thoughts on facing opponents armed with guns. Their opinions had universally been that the only threat such weapons posed to them would be from sniper fire. Any closer than that, and there were an embarassment of ways to prevent the gun from firing, or the bullet from striking.

Negi was not quite so sanguine. Of course, he suspected that his perspective was different because very few, if any, of his colleagues in the field counted any true masters of the gun among their close allies, as he did. For the most part, Mana agreed with their verdict. Her preferred method of dealing with an enemy mage was the sniper shot from a concealed position — with a magically incapacitating round if possible, but if not ... then not.

But she also had no illusions that she would always be able to have her choice of circumstances in every engagement. Relying too much on long-ranged attacks would be a weakness, and she abhorred weakness in herself. So Mana had set out to develop a set of tactics for close- to medium-range combat that allowed her to bring her strengths to bear, and Negi was happy to help her practice them. He was her teacher, after all, and it was only right to help his students to develop their skills.

Of course, the sessions involved some heavy handicapping on Negi's side. Not using Erebus, a power that practically no other caster had ever or would ever wield, was just the beginning of it. Mana didn't want him to reduce himself to the level of a 'normal' mage, whatever that was, since she would certainly never be facing one. But on the other hand, no matter how lethal the shooter, bullets couldn't be made to move faster than their propellants would permit. And those velocities were nowhere nearly as fast as he could go in lightning mode.

So, holding back from his full power, how did things go?

"I think you killed me twice over," Negi declared wearily, looking at the dye splatters on his coveralls as he lay on the forest floor.

"No," Mana reflected as she leaned back against one of the trees. "That one on your side, it's bad, but probably fixable if you have a healer nearby, and you probably would in a real fight. And I had to pull back after I pulled it off, so I wouldn't be able to follow through or cap the healer. Now, the one to your center of mass, that's a kill shot. Barring immediate, artifact-level healing, it'd have you bleeding out pretty quickly."

"So you win, then," he confirmed.

"Only if I survive the rest of the encounter, which is by no means certain," she replied with a shrug.

Negi nodded ruefully, imagining the fury that wouold be unleashed on someone who succeeded in killing him. It would have been much more flattering to his ego if he didn't find the thought of his friends on a grief-filled roaring rampage of revenge to be horrifically disturbing. The thought of his own death didn't bother him nearly as much. Or at least, it wouldn't have, up until recently.

"Well, up and at 'em, private," the mercenary said as she came over to offer him a hand up.

He winced at the nickname, bestowed on him after calling her 'Commander' once too many times. The embarrassment distracted him from realizing her intent until she'd pulled him up into a tight embrace, with her chin resting against the top of his head and his face against her left breast.

"It wasn't your fault, you know," Mana told him after a moment of silence.

"I never thought it was," he replied, not lifting his face to meet her gaze.

She let out a short laugh devoid of mirth. "You are a terrible liar. It's an endearing quality, really, but heaven help us all if you ever have to rely on verbal deception, _querido_ ... ah, no, no flinching when I murmur sweet nothings, you'll give this poor girl a complex."

"Wouldn't want that," Negi muttered.

"I'll take snark if I have to, but I'd rather have that foolishly honest face of yours facing mine."

Obedient as ever, he lifted his head to look up at her.

"It wasn't your fault," Mana repeated.

"I know that."

"But you feel guilty, nonetheless. It's a lot easier than blaming me, isn't it?"

"Eh?" he asked, startled by the way that the conversation had suddenly turned. "Why would I blame you?"

"I had a warning, remember? Your mother dropped that bombshell on us right before she left. So I had plenty of time to change my ways. And I didn't. And so ... and so I had a miscarriage, and our daughter died without being born. And if it was anyone's fault, it was mine. Certainly not yours."

"But I could have done something," Negi protested.

"Like what? Force me to spend the next nine months in confinement?" she asked. Seeing a speculative look on Negi's face, she continued with considerably greater asperity. "I'd like to see you try it!"

"I suppose that would be a bit much to ask," he muttered.

"Damn straight," she said, as she shifted the embrace so that he was at her side. Together, they started to walk towards the path out of the forest, towards the shrine where Negi would change out of the coveralls and into his suit.

"Do you think about her a lot?" Negi asked softly, breaking the silence.

"I try not to," Mana answered, eventually. "Dwelling on might-have-beens is a good way to get yourself killed."

There were all too many of those, he mused, but chose to address another part of her statement. "You try?"

"I ... try."


	3. Chachamaru

Until she'd moved into Chisame's room, she hadn't had a bed. It was, to an extent, superfluous. Unlike her biological associates, her tactile senses shut off during her periods of dormancy. She couldn't experience the comforting sensations of a soft mattress or a warm blanket except by remaining conscious, which would defeat the point of the exercise.

And yet, after only four months, Chachamaru couldn't envision going back to the way that things had been. The joy of moving out of standby mode and experiencing the sensation of Chisame's arms around her was too wonderful to ever give up.

It wasn't just the sex, for they did not make love every night; had not done so, in fact, last night. Actually, they didn't do it anywhere nearly as often as she had when she lived with the person she didn't live with anymore. But the other side, the emotional intimacy that she'd craved without ever realizing that she wasn't getting it, was finally within her grasp.

Evangeline had never wanted Chachamaru to sleep beside her.

But thinking about that produced ... not pain, exactly, but unpleasant confusion. And she didn't need that confusion while she was making Chisame's lunch. That was what had sparked this entire thought process, actually. She'd never made lunches while she lived with her late master, either. She had made tea, and Chisame had started to prefer Chachamaru's iced tea to the colas she'd formerly drank.

So some things had changed, and that was good.

But some things had not changed, and that was good.

Did it follow, then, that both change and the absence of change were both good?

Now, that was confusing for someone with a very binary view of existence. Fortunately, she'd finished packing the sliced hamburger into the box, and the lunch was made. "Chisame," she announced, directing her words to the curtained off area of the dorm room where her roommate did her 'work'. "I've finished your lunch."

A grunt that Chachamaru chose to interpret as appreciative came from behind the curtain. Again, some things did not change. Evangeline had often made such noises when she was engrossed with her video games.

"And now I'm going to head over to sensei's room to deliver your invitation to spend New Years with you and Sora-sama, and also make sure his lunch is nutricious," she continued, taking off her apron. "I don't think he's been eating right lat—"

"He'll be training, you know," Chisame interrupted. "He probably won't even be there."

"He may have come back from his exercises before heading to the school building," Chachamaru said evenly.

"... why are you trying to kid me? You aren't going to kid me. I'm the queen of ulterior motives, you know that, right?"

"I don't believe that I have any ulterior motives," the gynoid asserted as she pulled on her coat. It was hardly necessary, except for her half-hearted attempts to preserve the illusion of her humanity. Still, that counted for something these days. "I will probably not be back in time to walk with you to school," she added.

"Uh-huh. Well, when it doesn't work like you want it to, then —" Sigh. "— then go ahead and come crying to me. You will anyway, right?" There was a faintly defeated note in her voice.

The question seemed rhetorical, so Chachamaru didn't answer it.

Some things changed, and some didn't seem to change at all. Or perhaps the change was so slow that it could only be perceived in hindsight, which Chachamaru was given to understand was a more accurate mode of perception for humans. She followed this thought process for quite some time as she walked to the teachers' residence.

Arriving at Negi's door, she knocked. No response. Logically, there was no need to become concerned. Given that the building was not a flaming ruin, the probability that Negi had come under attack was vanishingly small. It was much more likely that Chisame's earlier supposition about Negi's whereabouts was correct.

But the triumph of her operating system was its ability to go beyond logic. And she had been entrusted with a spare key. So it would be wrong, in a sense, not to use that key to gain access to the room. So she did.

The tiny person whose body had once housed her late master's mind and soul was seated at the room's kotatsu, eating cereal and watching videotaped _Sesame Street_. She turned to look at the door with a bored expression. "Ah," she said. "'Tis ye."

Well, Chachamaru mused, she is not screaming, so this is going better than average. "Good morning, Miss McDowell," she said aloud. "Is Mr. Springfield not here at the moment?"

"Were he, would he nae ha' come to yon door when did ye knock on it?" the little girl replied in an irritable, 'why-am-I-set-upon-by-fools' tone, so reminiscent of Evangeline that Chachamaru's coprocessor skipped several cycles.

"I suppose that is so," the gynoid allowed when she could function again. "Well, then. If he comes back, would you please tell him that Miss Hasegawa has extended him an invitation to visit with her over the holiday season." She paused, feigning a breath, and then added, "And I am sure that she and her mother would be pleased to have you join them as a guest as well."

"Will ye be there?" the girl asked, turning her attention back to Kukkimonsuta's antics.

"That is the plan."

"Then I think not."

"If my presence is an obstacle, then I will absent myself."

Kitty whipped her head back around, clearly startled. Chachamaru took a moment to commit the image to permanent memory. "Why would ye do such a thing?"

"Because I am so constituted as to derive most of my own happiness from the happiness of others," Chachamaru said, knowing full well that this would go well over the little girl's head.

Sure enough, all that Kitty did was gape.

"Well, then. If you'll excuse me, I must hurry to attend class."

"But I dinnae even like ye," the girl protested quietly, just as Chachamaru started to close the door.

"No," she agreed. "But I love you."

She left her with that contradiction.


	4. Konoka and Setsuna

As far as everyone else was concerned, Setsuna had moved into the top bunk that a certain person had vacated. No one who was at all familiar with the two of them was likely to believe that. Nor should they, for the top bunk went unused most of the time. "Most of the time", of course, specifically excluded the times when they did it there for the sake of variety.

There was an awful lot of variety in their relationship.

Konoka had done some research on the topic. (What, you thought that library exploration was only about nifty keen adventures? No, it involves a hefty dose of research, too.) In her research, she had encountered discussion of a phenomenon known as 'lesbian bed death'. It apparently involved two women in a relationship who stopped engaging in the physical side of that relationship.

Konoka had trouble wrapping her head around the idea. Why would anyone ever, for any reason, give up that side of a relationship? Particularly when there were so many different ways to do it, so many things do try while doing it, so many places to be doing it ... it was just baffling!

And so Setsuna stoically bore the burden of being in a relationship with a recovering nymphomaniac who had discovered the joys of monogamy. (Or rather, to be perfectly honest, she bore it with a pose of stoicism that fooled nobody, just like nobody believed the whole 'separate bunks' story.)

But it shouldn't be thought that their relationship was all sexual hijinx. (It was only largely that.) There were also many quiet moments of peaceful intimacy, which they both cherished a great deal. Moments like this one, where Setsuna stood behind her beloved ojousama (as she still called her in the privacy of her heart) and gave her lustrous black hair one hundred strokes with the brush.

Of course, even that was not without a certain sensual component. Only hours before, she had received one hundred strokes with that very same brush to a different part of her anatomy. (She was still sorting out how she felt about that sort of thing.)

"You're so good at this, darling," Konoka said with a dreamy smile. 'Darling' had become her name of choice for Setsuna, with 'Setchan' now off-limits by her own choice.

"If the bodyguard thing doesn't work out, perhaps I can find work as a stylist," Setsuna replied, making an attempt at humor.

As a reward, Konoka laughed, then replied, "Well, you're already better at it than —" And then her face froze, and her voice stopped.

After a moment, Setsuna sighed, then crouched down so that she could look right into the mirror at the reflection of her girlfriend's face. "You can talk about her, if you want to talk about her, you know. I won't get angry."

"Really?" Konoka asked warily.

"Really," Setsuna confirmed as she stood up again. "It's been five months, after all. I don't hold grudges that long."

"You blamed yourself for me almost drowning for eight years."

"That was a different thing!" Setsuna protested, blushing and wondering as she did when that phrase had entered her idiom. "Anyway, while Ì'm still not too happy about the way that she left us without saying goodbye, it doesn't upset me anymore. So, if you want to talk about her, go ahead. I'll even start it myself." A deep breath. "A. A-a-a-asss, aaasssu ... aaasssssuuu ..."

"Asuna," Konoka supplied at last.

"See, I'm not mad!" Setsuna proclaimed, grinning a bit too widely for comfort. "You said her name, and I did not get angry. You can even talk about all your happy memories with her, so many more than I got to make, and —" It then became apparent even to Setsuna that her tone was starting to become fairly angry, so she choked back her words and resumed brushing in silence.

That silence reigned for a few moments.

"Setsuna," the healer mage said at last. "There's something I have to tell you."

_It's sad when one's personal name becomes nothing more than a signal of doom,_ Setsuna mused. "What?" she asked warily.

"It was my fault."

She paused mid-stroke. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"The reason that you're so mad at Asuna. It's my fault."

"... she left because of you?" Setsuna asked, now utterly bewildered. After she had found out, she'd spoken with Negi, and what he'd told her did not square at all with what Konoka was saying.

"No," the other girl whined. "That's not it, and don't play dumb. You're not mad that she left, you're mad that she left without saying goodbye."

Well, that was true, but —

"Only she did," Konoka continued. "She said goodbye to me, Setsuna. And I put up such a fuss, begging and pleading with her not to go, and, and, well, and we did it, and ... and then when she finally did leave, she said, 'I can't take another goodbye like this.' So it was my fault that she didn't say goodbye to you. I'm sorry."

All that the Shinmei swordswoman could do was embrace her from behind, and whisper right into her ear. "Ojousama no baka," she said, gently and fondly.

"You're not mad?" Konoka asked.

"Not at you," she answered. "I'm not exactly happy about you keeping this from me, because I thought we'd both learned our lessons about doing that. But I'm only mad at her for putting that on you."

Konoka decided not to argue the point. "Our class has been through a lot this year, hasn't it?"

Setsuna nodded. "A lot of people that I thought would always be there are gone, now. Chao, Evangeline, Satomi, Ayaka, Chizuru ... Asuna ... but I suppose that partings are inevitable on the road of life," she added stoically.

"But reunions can happen, too," Konoka reminded, reaching up to take her lover's hand in her own.

Then the phone rang. Since it was closest to Konoka, she picked it up and answered. "Hello? Oh! What a coincidence. Setsuna and I were just talking about you!"

Setsuna's eyes widened.


	5. Makie

Life was wonderful.

It wasn't perfect, to be sure. If it was perfect, she'd be dating Negi! And her friends wouldn't be in the weird love polygon that they were in, and they'd spend a lot more time with her. But not in the sexy way that they spent time with each other, of course.

Well, _maybe_ that way too.

But now was not the time to be thinking of such things! It was the last day of school before winter break, and today was going to be Makie's day! Before everyone went away for two weeks, she was going to kiss Negi!

Okay, so if you wanted to get all technical about it, she'd actually already done that. But this time was not going to be part of some magical ritual which she hadn't really understood at the time and probably still didn't but which wasn't really all that important to her immediate concerns. No indeedy! This was going to be kissing for the sake of kissing. Which might — who knows? — lead to other stuff for the sake of other stuff.

And the best part of it was that Negi himself had set the whole thing up in the first place. He was practically asking for it. A week or so ago, when everyone had been getting excited about the upcoming winter break, their homeroom teacher had brought in a sprig of mistletoe and pinned it to the top of the doorway. Even Makie knew what that meant!

Of course, Negi had used the mistletoe as a way of getting the girls interested in a lesson about Christmas traditions in the United Kingdom, which included reading to them from something called 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'. For her part, Makie was more than willing to pay attention. Since the trip to the Magical World, she'd discovered a genuine fascination for learning about different countries that was pulling her social studies grades way up.

But she'd also been paying attention to the rest of the class. She knew perfectly well that some of the wicked, awful girls in the class — all of whom were really nice people that she liked a lot — weren't even paying attention to the lesson. Instead their eyes were darting back and forth between Negi and the sprig of mistletoe.

Fortunately, the one who would have been the worst offender wasn't there anymore. Unfortunately, that meant that Misa was expanding to fill the void that the class representative had left behind. Makie was actually a bit surprised at how much she missed her fiercest rival. If nothing else, Ayaka could always be counted on to fight within certain limits of propriety. Misa, on the other hand, knew no limits. She was an enemy to be feared, not respected.

Makie paused, reflected on her thoughts, and then shook her head. Why did shounen battle tropes keep intruding themselves into her narrative? This wasn't that kind of story!

Anyway, despite everyone's scheming, Negi had managed to avoid getting kissed for the whole week since then. In fact, Makie thought he seemed a little bit relieved about that. Maybe even a little bit smug. Either way, it was a refreshing change from his usual obliviousness. (Was that a word?) But today, that was all going to change. Today, Makie was on the case.

She finished primping herself in the mirror, making one last check of her boobs. Yes, there were definite signs of growth! Could it be that those rumors were true, and that the best way to make them grow was to have them massaged? And that the tickle fests she got into with the slime-tans counted for those purposes? It could be so! How lucky she was to have them in her life, even if it wasn't so.

Speaking of which, Makie decided that now was as good a time as any to let them in on her plans. "Ameko! Suramui! Purin!" she called out as she pulled on her coat.

The three slime girls promptly materialized before her, like the cloud ninjas they aspired to be.

Well, sort of. "Yes, Makie-sama?" asked Ameko, who was holding a brush and dustpan. Makie was pretty sure that ninjas didn't clean houses.

"Yo, wassup?" inquired Suramui as she floated three feet over the ground with an open bag of potato chips in her hand. Makie was pretty sure that ninjas didn't eat potato chips.

For her part, Purin said nothing, but simply smiled. Not exactly warmly, but with a certain charm. Makie was pretty sure that Purin could be a ninja if she really wanted to be. She worked hard at being cool.

"Okay!" she said. "As you all aware, winter break is upon us, and I'll be heading to my parents' house for New Years."

"We'll miss you," said Ameko, while the other two nodded.

Now Makie beamed. "You won't have to miss me! I've gotten the headmaster's permission to take the three of you off-campus and introduce you to my mom and dad!"

"Eh?" the slime girls chorused, eyes suddenly wider than their heads.

"But your dad is ghrn hn hmrmhn mhn," commmented Suramui, with the second part of the sentence muffled by the other two covering her mouth with their hands.

"What was that?" Makie asked, blinking.

"Suramui was just saying that we thought your esteemed parents were wholly unaware of the existence of magic," Ameko lied sincerely. Purin nodded for emphasis.

"Oh," Makie said, wondering why they'd need to stop her from saying that. Well, it probably wasn't important. "Anyway, yes, they are. So you're going to have to pretend to be human while you're there."

Suramui and Purin exchanged dubious looks. "Oh my," said Ameko uneasily. "I am, well, not so sure that this is such a very good plan, Makie-sama. Surely, your esteemed parents will be clever enough to notice our peculiarities, as it were?"

"Ah! That's the best part! I've thought up a surefire way of explaining those so that they won't ask too many questions." Makie was smiling broadly now.

"And that would be?"

"We're going to tell them that you're French!"

As she strolled out humming, leaving the slime-tans in stunned awe of her genius, Makie decided that she'd been right earlier.

Life was wonderful.


	6. Haruna

There were parts of the job that Negi enjoyed, and there were parts that he didn't. This meeting, right before homeroom, was definitely one of the latter.

"Is it really okay for us to be talking openly like this?" Haruna asked, peering around at the other teachers in the staff room while she stood beside Negi's desk.

"Yes, I cast a conversational disguise spell. People nearby will hear us talking about some safe topic," Negi answered absently, examining the form Haruna had handed to him. He looked up after a moment. "Are you sure that this is what you want to do?"

Haruna just nodded in response.

"I know that things have been a little uncomfortable for you since the end of summer break, but —"

"Uncomfortable," Haruna interjected, nodding. "That is a good word for it, all right. Learning that your peripubescent teacher is engaging in incestuous sex and has also knocked up three of your classmates ... yeah, that's very uncomfortable, learning that."

Negi blushed. "Haruna-san!"

"And he blushes, too," she muttered. "Goes through all that, and is still able to blush when someone talks a little dirty around him. Boy, am I ever making the right call here."

He struggled to bring the blush under control, because, dammit, he wasn't embarassed or ashamed of what he did, merely conscious that it wasn't the done thing. And perhaps a little uncomfortable with how much it happened, too. "Ahem," he said at last. "It is Mahora's policy to allow students to transfer between home rooms if they feel that a change in educational culture would serve their needs, but surely your friends in the class will miss you."

"Probably," Haruna agreed, silently marveling at how adept Negi had become at the traditional Japanese art of emotional blackmail. In under a year, too! "But even though things have been better between us than they were a few months ago, we're not, not close anymore. Yue and Nodoka have each other, and so do Konoka and Setsuna. There's no place for me in any of this. I'm the fifth wheel, and who needs —"

"Forgive me, Haruna-san," Negi interrupted, very delicately. "But isn't this the sort of behavior that annoyed and upset you when it was Yue-san expressing it, a while ago?"

Haruna blinked. Then laughed long and loud, startling the other teachers. (The sprite handling the phoney conversation quickly improvised a discussion of a funny variety show over her next words.) "Yeah, I guess it is at that. A+ on reading my motivation, sensei. You're really good at this. You might want to ditch the whole magical swordsman gig and become a teacher full-time."

"So then —" Negi started hopefully.

"No, I still want out," Haruna said, shaking her head and smiling broadly. (It was irritatingly reminiscent of Chao.) "But I'm doing it for entirely selfish reasons, and I'm not going to try and kid myself about them. I need to find a new path."

"What do you mean?" he asked, frowning.

"It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. Really, ever since those girls from another dimension showed up here back in August. You remember that, right?"

"Of course I do," Negi replied. "That's not the sort of thing someone's likely to forget." Though admittedly, he hadn't really been too closely involved in that situation. Which had been a pleasant change, but —

Haruna was still talking. "One of those girls was me. Well, not me, but the version of me from their world. And you know, despite all our differences, despite being from different families and histories and everything else, she was just like me, really. Just like the person that I used to be, back at the start of it all." She let out a sad laugh. "In fact, they got into that whole mess by her making the exact same sort of mistake that I made when I was her."

Her eyes went distant. "The first really big mistake I ever made. My 'first'. You wanna hear that story, sensei?"

"Not particularly."

"Tough, I want to vent. Looking back on it, that was when my life really started to go off the rails. And it wasn't even your fault, sensei, because it happened before I ever met you.

"It was one of my brother's friends. Well, his _friends_. It's complicated, but most things about my brother are. Anyway, this guy had been having some problems with his wife, and so naturally he tried to deal with his frustrations by beating up my brother. That worked out pretty much like you'd expect, and he ended up recuperating at our house.

"I'd known this guy all my life, you know, and I didn't like seeing him all depressed like that. So I decided to try and cheer him up by teasing him a little bit. Basically I did the whole 'you didn't come here to hunt' routine, and we ended up wrestling a bit on the floor, and then, well, then we weren't wrestling.

"I mean, on some level, I knew that this was a bad, bad idea. He's twenty years older than I am! He's married! He's not even interested in me! He's probably closeted gay for my brother! But I didn't know the expression 'hate sex' yet, and none of these ideas really registered with me." Her eyes already distant, went miles away. "It really felt kind of good. And then the door to the room where we were doing slid open."

"And your parents walked in on you?" Negi guessed.

"Close. It was actually his wife. She was pretty cool about it, once she calmed down and stopped threatening to feed us both to her pigs. Anyway, the point of this whole story is that I wasn't in control of the situation, even if I thought I was, and I grew up too fast. Not as fast as you did, maybe, but too fast all the same.

"When I met that girl, and found out that she was repeating the same mistakes I made, I found myself trying to steer her right. But that was silly and stupid, because I still don't have my own shit together, so how can I steer anyone else? I need to make a clean break with my past. And so here we are."

"I don't think that you can make that kind of break, Haruna-san. Everyone carries their past with them, no matter how much they might try to run from it."

"Very deep. I still want out."

"All right," Negi said at length. "I'll sign this form and turn it in. You'll be in a new homeroom after the break ends."

"Thank you, sensei," Haruna said. And drew in a deep breath. "And the other thing?"

"After classes."


	7. Chisame

And so began the last homeroom before the winter break. Satsuki, who'd received the post of class representative by unanimous acclamation, read off the announcements. She also took the time to gently remind those of her classmates who were on clean-up duty that they shouldn't rush the job just because it was the start of a vacation.

Negi, who wouldn't have thought of that, nodded approvingly before moving on to asking about the girls' plans for the break. The majority of them were planning on traveling to spend time with their families. From the looks on Fuuka and Fumika's faces, they weren't looking forward to that at all. But they weren't alone in this, as several of the others were also clearly anxious about the notion. Not seeing people for nearly a year and then being thrust into close contact with them couldn't be easy.

Some had other plans, of course. Kaede was heading off into the mountains for some extended practice in the art of strolling. (Negi wasn't sure why she bothered with the pretense, but didn't interrupt.) And Mana would be working hard at the shrine in preparations for its New Years ceremonies, unless some urgent business called her away. (Again, Negi didn't know who she was trying to fool.)

When Chisame mentioned that she'd be spending the break with her mother and her new baby brother, who'd moved to Mahora after Sora-san had gotten a job with one of the academy's vocational colleges, he forced himself not to react. He'd gotten very good at that. He'd had to do so. Otherwise, the idea would make him want to faint dead away, as he had when she'd first told him the news.

"Well, I hope you all have a good time, regardless of your plans," he concluded at last. "As for me, I'll be stuck here working on lesson plans." And training and training and training."If any of you need help, you know how to reach me — ah, there's the bell."

Satsuki bade everyone stand and then bow to their teacher, and he made his escape. He wouldn't see any of them again until they had English class, later that afternoon.

So what should he do with himself until then? Officially, he supposed, he should go back to the staff room and gets some paperwork done, before his next class started. But he just wasn't in the mood.

Eventually, he found himself standing in the stairwell, looking out the window at the winer scene before him. It occurred to him that his pose in doing so was more than a little reminiscent of Takahata's, when he'd seen him on the day that Negi had arrived here at Mahora. Add a cigarette to his mouth, and he could be a dead ringer.

Perhaps he should start smoking.

No, no, no, that was a disgusting habit, and he had enough bad habits already. To say nothing of the difficulty of obtaining cigarettes at his age. Well, he supposed that he could get around that with age-up pills, but —

His train of thought was interrupted by a cough from behind him. Negi turned to see Chisame standing on the stairs looking down at him.

She drew in a breath, and began speaking in English. "Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning," she said.

_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways._  
_I love thee to the depth and breadth and height_  
_My soul can reach,when feeling out of sight_  
_For the ends of being and ideal grace._

As she recited, she slowly walked down the stairs, one step per verse. Her accent wasn't perfect, and she slurred the "l" in "soul". But Negi was only dimly aware of these facts as she slowly made her way down towards him.

_I love thee to the level of every day's_  
_Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light._  
_I love thee freely, as men strive for right._  
_I love thee purely, as they turn from praise._

Her eyes never left his, not even for a moment.

_I love thee with the passion put to use_  
_In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith._  
_I love thee with a love I seemed to lose_  
_With my lost saints._

And now they were on the same level, and she was slowly walking in his direction.

_I love thee with the breath,_  
_Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,_  
_I shall but love thee better after death._

Silence fell in the stairwell.

"I think poetry recital is more on the level of high school English, not middle school," Negi said at last.

Chisame just nodded.

"And that's really more of a Valentine's Day poem than a Christmas one."

"I didn't think 'Good King Wenceslas' was appropriate, somehow," she said, eyebrow twitching slightly.

"But A+, nonetheless," he concluded.

"Thank you. Are you coming over for New Years?"

He looked away. "I think I need to be with Kitty —"

"She can come too."

"— and I don't want to risk exposing her to —"

"We can control ourselves," Chisame ground out from between clenched teeth.

"Can we?" Negi asked wearily. "It's taking a lot for me not to hug you right now."

"Good," she said mercilessly. I want you to want me like I want you. "Please come over. I think he wants to see you."

"I'll try," he said.

"Okay."


	8. Nodoka

"Ah! Sensei, better hurry!" Makie called out from where she stood just outside the classroom's door, watching him approach. "It wouldn't do for sensei to be late to class!"

Negi obliged her by picking up the pace, arriving at the doorway just as the bell —

"Sensei," Makie said sweetly. "We're under the mistletoe."

He wasn't sure what possessed him to look up, since he was the one who'd hung the silly thing. But sure enough, there it was. Ignoring the collective gasp from the rest of the class (and the murmured "Cunning wench!" in a voice that sounded like Misa's) he lowered his face and said, "Yes, we are."

As Makie leaned forward, eyes half-closed and lips puckered, he quickly pressed a kiss on her cheek, as one would to one's maiden aunt. (Which, of course, she was.) He quickly headed for the lectern while she was still shocked and unable to detain him further, affecting not to hear the faint moan of frustration that came from her direction a moment later.

So passed his last class with 3-A before the break, not without incident but without difficulty. Overall, he thought that the class was doing very well, despite losing most of its best and brightest, since events had driven some of his formerly less-inspired students to improve themselves.

The bell rang. The students once again stood and bowed to him as he made his exit. So far, so good. He'd made it through the whole week without any increase, at least, in the number of people who were romantically involved with him, despite the challenge he'd made to the class with the mistletoe. That wasn't as good as a reduction of the number would have been, of course, but it was good.

Negi went to the staff meeting, then, and endured the discussion of various mundane issues with good grace, giving his opinion when solicited but never volunteering. It took more time than he thought it should, but less time than it had before he'd learned to avoid volunteering.

With that out of the way, there were really only two tasks remaining to him. So he headed to the classs to take down the mistletoe before his planned rendezvous with Haruna. He slid open the door, expecting to see that the students on the clean-up duty had already finished and departed

He was almost right.

"Sensei," said Nodoka, standing with her back to the windows that displayed the darkening afternoon sky. "We need to talk."

He swallowed, came the rest of the way into the room, and closed the door behind him. With a flash of tactical brilliance, he cast a quick sound-proofing spell on it as he did. "Yes, Nodoka-san?" he asked. "What —"

"I know about you and Chisame," she said.

 _All right,_ he thought calmly. _Mother warned me that she had ideas in this direction, so there's no reason to panic. I just have to honestly reassure her that —_

"I know that her little brother is your son with her," Nodoka continued, starting to inch towards him.

_... Mother never warned me there'd be days like this._

"I don't really know how you did that," she added, shaking her head. "Really, I don't, I don't care. But I want that sort of relationship with you, Negi-sensei. I'd like to be the only one. But it d-doesn't seem very likely, especially considering that. Well, then, I at least want to be one of the ones."

She'd crossed the floor to where he was standing, stock still, and now she was standing in front of him, smiling sweetly but with a look in her eyes that he'd never seen there before.

"Nodoka-san," he said, trying to hold onto some shred of control over the situation. "This is a bad idea."

She nodded. "I'll regret it, later, probably. But some regrets are more bitter than others. You taught me that. And here we are, under the mistletoe." And she leaned down to kiss him, soundly, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace that he couldn't break without breaking her. And he could never do that.

So he really had no choice but to let her gently push him up against the blackboard, kissing him far more deeply than she ever had in the past, and as she did so her hands ran down his back from his shoulders to his behind, then his hips and in front. The sound of his zipper being opened filled the air, and he felt the cold air of the classroom on his privates.

"It's very pretty, Sensei," Nodoka said, sounding very quiet despite how close she was to him.

"Nodo-" he said, but before he could finish, she was pulling back and dropping down before him, and then he felt her mouth on him, tentative caresses of her tongue quickly turning into forceful, purposeful ones. He let out a gasp as his hands ran through her beautiful violet hair.

And then he was out of her mouth, again, and another gasp escaped him as the cold bit at his genitals for a moment too long before she was rising up to kiss him again, one leg lifted up so that her knee pressed against his hip. He felt his thing brush up against fabric, and entertained the hope that she'd be satisfied with frottage for a moment, before he heard the faint rustle of it being pulled to one side.

"In me, Sensei."

And then he was in her.

"I'm sorry, Sensei," she murmured as she held him there. "You deserve a virgin, but I'm not. I'm so -"

"Don't, don't apologize, Nodoka-sa- Nodoka. You are, you are beautiful, and sweet, and -"

"So, so, so happy," she said, and began to rock back and forth.

He didn't do any of the work, just standing there and letting her rut against him, until it became clear that he was about to achieve climax. "Nodoka, I-I'm going to -"

"It's okay, it's okay, I want this, it's a safe day."

He wanted to scream that safe days were a myth, but it was too late. He always thought of his mother at moments like these, when, she would say, his cock spewed its load of cum into a willing cunt. So indelicate.

His legs went weak right afterwards, and he collapsed to the floor, his head against her still-clothed stomach. He felt her reach down, feel around in her genitals. And then she started running the panties down her legs. "Too messy to put these back on," he heard her say. "You keep them, Sensei. They're my other gift."

He couldn't even look at her as they dropped down onto his softening hard-on. All that he could do was think of the ways that he was going to have to doctor the surveillance footage in his classroom to cover this up ...

* * *

Nodoka slid the classroom door closed behind her, and walked down the hallway. The unfamiliar feeling of her skirt brushing up against the usually clothed but presently denuded parts of her body beneath it was strangely pleasant as she made her way to the washroom.

Yue was waiting there for her, as they'd planned, standing by the sinks. She took one look at Nodoka and swallowed audibly. "Did you — you did, didn't you? W-what, what was it —"

Nodoka, fully aware that Yue could easily go on like this for hours, simply said, "It was like this." And closed the distance between them.


	9. Yue

Yue sometimes wondered when she'd started to lose control.

When her sometimes confusing relationship with Nodoka had turned physical for the first time, she'd been in control. She had come to her to say goodbye and make one last sweet memory with her. And though she'd been surprised by how much passion Nodoka had shown, Yue had been in control. She'd walked away when it was over.

In her relationships at Ariadne, she'd still been in control. She'd been aware that various people were interested in her, that way, and since she hadn't wanted to start something so soon after ending something that had barely begun, she hadn't pursued any of that.

And then Nodoka came back into her life, and somewhere along the line, she'd started to lose control. It wasn't just that Nodoka wanted physical intimacy a lot more often than Yue did, and had an imaginative side when it came to lovemaking that she really hadn't expected. But the loss of control didn't just apply to her interactions with Nodoka. That had been brought home to her when Collette, right before the girls from Ariadne had gone home, had waited until they were alone and then promptly jumped her bones.

She supposed that she could have made the beast-girl stop, but she just couldn't say no to her obvious need.

And now, again, as Nodoka kissed her fiercely, with the scent of Negi-sensei all over her, she couldn't bring herself to say no, even though parts of this made her very, very uncomforable, and -

"Lick me," Nodoka said, leaning back against one of the sinks and lifting her skirt to reveal the mess below.

Yue's jaw dropped. "You, you let him, he -"

" _Lick_ me."

Yue felt herself drop to her knees and pressed her lips and tongue to that mess, conscious of the fact that she was tasting a boy's stuff for the first time, under circumstances completely different from any that she'd ever envisioned. It was completely different from the flavors she'd sampled from girls before this. And the fact that it was the remnant of her other great crush wasn't something that she could easily ignore. But she focused on doing what would please the lover who was with her right then, and Nodoka, already on the edge, quickly came to orgasm.

"Your turn now," she said breathily as she slumped down to start undressing Yue.

"Oh, come _on!_ " A familiar voice abruptly called out from one of the bathroom stalls. Just as abruptly, a pair of slippered feet dropped down into sight through the aperture at the bottom of the stall door, and then the door swung open.

"How long d'you two expect me to keep my balance on that thing, anyway?" Haruna demanded angrily, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the stall's toilet.

Yue yelped as she started to pull her clothes back into place. "What, hey, no, how long have you been in there?" she stammered out

Haruna suppressed, with difficulty, the urge to steal a certain annoying person's usual response to that sort of question. "Since before you showed up and started hanging around," she said instead.

"Did you enjoy listening in our conversation?" Nodoka asked, frowning heavily.

Haruna couldn't help but notice that, unlike Yue, Nodoka hadn't made any real attempt to cover herself up when she'd realized that someone else was present. Her shy little friend wasn't so shy anymore. And from the sound of her voice, she suspectted that 'friend' might not be the right word either.

"No," she answered, rather than dwell on any of that. "It turns out that voyeurism isn't really one of my kinks, either. I'm sure you're shocked. Now, if you'll excuse me —"

"Would you rather join in than watch?" Nodoka interjected.

"Eh?" Yue gasped, turning her head rapidly between the two of them, eyes wide with panic.

Haruna stared at Nodoka's calm face for a long moment, before she sighed and lifted a hand to rub the bridge of her nose. "If I really thought you were serious, and not just trying to freak me out or upset me or maybe just show me who's boss, if I could bring myself to believe that you actually wanted me ... but the point is, I don't believe that. Any of that. So. Thanks, but no thanks, and nice job making what I am going to do now just a little bit easier."

And with that, Haruna turned and walked right out the washroom door into the hallway. Nodoka promptly started pulling her clothes back on and, dragging the still-not-quite-recovered Yue along with her, took off in pursuit.

It was immediately apparent where Haruna was going, and Yue felt her jaw drop again when she saw her crazy — well, _crazier_ — friend stepping into their classroom, where just a little while before — "No," she gasped, as her mouth once again ran at the same pace as her thoughts. "She wouldn't."

"Of course she would," Nodoka nearly snarled as she ran down the hallway.

"Are you really sure about this, Haruna-san?" they could hear Negi asking.

"Yes, Negi-kun," Haruna's voice replied. "Do it now, please."

Nodoka flung open the door, crying out, "You utter self-serving hypocrite, Haruna, how dare you try to —" _seduce **my** Negi-sensei_ , she was about to say, though she probably would have stumbled on the 'my'. However, the rest of the sentence was obviated when the fact that neither Haruna nor Negi was in any state of undress registered on her eyes. Nor did they present the appearance of those preparing for that sort of thing, aside from Haruna being slightly crouched down so that Negi could reach up towards her lips with his hand.

A moment of silence ensued.

"You see, Haruna-san?" Negi said earnestly. "Your friends are worried about you, even if they don't know what's going on, and they've come to try and talk you out of this —"

"Wow, you're misreading this situation almost completely!" Haruna interrupted. "Just do it, okay?"

With an expression of deep regret, Negi touched his finger to Haruna's lips, and then drew it along their length, as though erasing something. A card-shaped light appeared in front of Haruna's head as he did so.

"Pactio release," Negi said, loudly. The card proceeded to disintegrate into much tinier squares of light that faded out of sight quickly.

"You and I are no longer partners, Haruna-san," he added.

"Yeah, " she replied, looking down at her hands. After a moment, she spoke up again. "Well. See you around, sensei." She looked at Yue and Nodoka. "That goes for you, too." And with that farewell, she left the room before their shocked eyes.

"What just happened?" Yue heard herself asking. It seemed like she had even less control than she realized ...


	10. Misora and Cocone

"No, said Sister Shakti, firmly and decisively.

"Please?" Misora asked, eyes shining.

"No."

"Do it for the kids."

"No."

"Do it for their parents."

"No."

"Do it for me?"

"Definitely no."

"Do it for the Christmas Spirit?"

Sigh. "We do not believe in anthropomorphized personifications of holidays, Misora."

"Sister Sourire would do it."

Now Shakti's eyebrow was twitching dangerously. "Sister Sourire abandoned her vows to live openly as a lesbian. While I am utterly unsurprised that you would regard her as a role model, rest assured that I for one do not."

"Yeah, that's so much worse than breaking them every chance you get," Misora muttered.

"What was that?" Shakti asked sharply.

"Nothing!" Misora answered angelically, knowing that Shakti probably knew what she'd said. "Please?"

"You already said please. Misora, when I say no, I do not mean 'maybe', or 'I'll consider it', or 'I need to be persuaded'. I mean 'no'. I mean that I will _not_ —"

And then Shakti felt a slight tug on her habit's right sleeve. Frowning, she looked down at her side. Cocone was standing there, looking up with her usually impassive face somehow expressing immeasurable sorrow and regret, eyes giving the impression of being right on the edge of dissolving into tears. Her tiny lips moved just enough to softly say, "Please?"

Shakti let out a sound somewhere between a snarl and a groan. "Fine," she said at last. "I'll do it. _Once._ " She turned and stomped off towards the stairs leading up to the church proper.

"Wow!" said Misora, eyes squared. "How did you manage to —"

"Sincerity, " Cocone answered, stone-faced once more. "I really do want to see it."

"Yeah, that'd do it. Well, let's hurry up before she goes and starts without us."

They quickly headed upstairs, narrowly avoiding being drawn into greeting duties at the church's front door with Sister Caren and that quote-unquote friend of hers who'd shown up to help during the holidays. Misora frowned slightly as she tried to remember the blue-haired woman's name. Sky or something, maybe. Ah well, it wasn't important.

Seeing her standing there with Caren, though, reminded her again how much had changed in the last little while. This time last year, it had been Sister Yui there; now she was gone, having left when Father Gendou did. Honestly, Misora didn't miss either of them, or Father Kirei. Father Joseph, who'd been quickly transferred in to take over the two excommunicates jobs, was a lot nicer than either of those guys had been.

At least, Misora thought so. Cocone disagreed, claiming he was creepy. But that was probably just down to how much time he spent obsessing over the girls' choir. Well, better that than the boys' choir, right? And not even Cocone had anything bad to say about the recently arrived Sister Yukariko, who worked most closely with Father Joseph, even now briefing the choir with him.

The two young acolytes arrived in the pews just in time to see Shakti approaching the elderly American cleric and speaking quietly with him. He seemed surprised, but nodded acquiesence promptly. (Misora expected that his thought process probably went something like, 'What, she wants to give me even more time to fuss over the choir? God bless us every one!'')

Assured now that there would be no last minute backing out, Misora and Cocone slid into one of the pews beside Sister Misato and her students, Hayakawa Naomi and Komatsuzuki Rie. They were lucky to find those seats, actually, since the church was starting to get a little packed, with students and teachers from the Catholic-run schools showing up for this Christmas Eve service.

Misora could see lots of familiar faces in the crowd, like that Eiko girl from the dodgeball game all those months ago, and some of her teammates. And the famous Kitajima Sara was here with her cousin, Kaede, as was grade school celebutante Houraisen Runa, with her guardian and teacher Suminoe Takako. And on Takako-sensei's other side, there was a woman in her twenties who looked like an older version of Runa-san. Could that be ... well! It was certainly a night for reunions, wasn't it?

Most of these people, Misora knew, were no more Catholic than she was. Some of them probably considered themselves CTG — Catholic Til Graduation, Misora thought wryly. But not too wryly, because until lately, she'd have thought of herself as being the same way, just paying lip service to the faith as part of her training.

Lately, though —

She was distracted when Shakti finally went up to the mike, said a warm good evening to everyone, and explained that by popular request (HAH!) she was going to start the evening off with a bit of light music. With that, she reached behind her back, pulled a guitar out of thin air and slung it across her shoulder. One quick tune-up later, she announced, "Feel free to sing along, and if you don't know the words, just follow along with the tune."

And then, just like on another Christmas Eve, in 1818, Stille Nacht began to play.

Misora did, in fact, know the words. But all she did was hum along in tune with Cocone, since she had other things on her mind.

Lately, though, she'd been thinking a lot about the notion of faith in a higher power. It had been a really dangerous year. She'd come far too close to dying, too many times, to not appreciate it. But time and time again, she'd gotten out of those fixes, rarely if ever by her own abilities. She wouldn't say that her survival was miraculous, exactly, but she did find herself wondering whether someone was watching out for her.

Well, if so ... _then for that, for the warmth of the love I share with Cocone, for my friendships, for the music, and for Jesus Christ Our Lord ... Father in Heaven, I thank thee._

And then Shakti finished the last verse, and promptly forgot she'd said she was only going to do one song as she segued into another one.

_Feliz navidad_  
_Feliz navidad_  
_Feliz navidad_  
_Prospero año y felicidad_

Such a show-off, that one. 


	11. Fei

It was, she had decided, a terrible thing to peak this early in one's life.

There was a time, and the time was not long ago, when Fei had to really work in order to defeat the groups of less gifted martial artists who would occasionally challenge her. Oh, she made it look effortless. She never let even a trace of apprehension show on her face when they had at her.

But it was simply a fraud. Only in stories does a fighter face many opponents without concern for her welfare. If nothing else, the distraction that they all pose can prove fatal so easily. And so the sham confidence served its purpose, for those who were taken in by this posture were less likely to attack in the first place, and so not become that possibly deadly distraction.

Not so long ago, these had been her concerns.

Now, though? In battle now, her thoughts moved more swiftly than light itself. The moment in which a distraction might be truly deadly was no moment at all, no more than a fraction of a second so small as to be all but invisible to anyone else. The sham confidence was genuine, now. The uncertainty was gone.

And with it had gone all challenge. What joy could there be in an assured victory?

Well, she supposed that there was the joy of the artistic elegance to her movements that still remained, but that was for the observer, really. And it was problematic to cultivate. She would have to set up cameras to capture herself fighting, and watch the films to see how to make improvements, until the beauty of her technique was also perfected ... but no, that way lay madness and vanity.

She must simply face the facts. She had achieved the summit of her powers, and now she must live with the consequences of doing so — a life bereft of challenge.

"Good evening, Ku-roshi," said a voice from behind her as she sat by the frozen river thinking all of this.

Well, perhaps not wholely bereft, she reminded herself as she turned to smile at her teacher who was also her student. "Hello, Negi-bouzu," she said. "Would you join me as I sit and I muse?"

He nodded and sat down beside her. For a moment, they were united in silence, their breaths making clouds in the cold evening air.

"Why so sad, Negi?"

He blinked, looked as though he were about to deny it, then laughed a bit. "If it's so obvious, I must really have problems," he allowed. "Well, basically, Haruna-san has decided that she doesn't want to be one of my partners any more —"

"Eh? Crazy girl!"

"— and some other things have happened, and, well, it's all making me look back on all the people who should be here now, but aren't."

"Like Baka Red," Fei guessed.

"Yes," Negi replied, eyes closed. "Very much so." His eyes opened. "I hope I'm not hurting you by —"

She shook her head, rested a hand on his knee. "Strong people need and deserve strong people to love," she said. "Negi and Asuna are both very strong." She lifted it up and shook her first two fingers. "But! You are still not so strong as to not need a lesson from your roshi-aru! I think of her, too, and I think of Chao, and I am saddened they are not here. But this is an illusion. For they are here," she said, touching her left breast. "And they are here." She held up a clenched fist. "While I live, while I fight, those I love and fought are with me always, aru yo."

Negi looked thunderstruck. "That's, that's almost poetic, Ku-roshi."

"Eh, I have my moments," she said, rubbing the back of her head, before she stood up and assumed a stance. "And now we spar. Too long since we last spar, Negi-bouzu."

"Yes, I suppose it has been," he agreed, standing and assuming one of his own. "Let us dance, then."

And they did.

For all of three seconds.

Ku Fei found herself wondering whether any bystanders had been kind enough to get the license plate number of the low-flying jet plane that must have just hit her. Not too much, though, because she was finding the frozen grass to be utterly, utterly fascinating!

"Ack," she heard Negi say, sounding anxious. "I'm sorry, Ku-roshi, I should've maybe built up to that."

"No, no, this is good," she said, still examining the ground. "A very good thing, aru yo!"

"Eh?"

"You see, Negi, I have been worrying that I have peaked, and peaked too early. But now, as I fight you, I see that it is not so. I have climbed to a certain height, and I have done well to do so. But now the sun dispels the clouds around the summit I have attained, and I see that what I thought was a mountain was veritably but the merest foothills of the true mountains, which I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I have not yet begun to scale those mountains, and yet I can do so. Nay, I must and shall do so. And so I am profoundly grateful to you, my student, my teacher, and my love."

Unfortunately, she said all that in Mandarin. Well, perhaps, she realized as she gave it a bit of thought, it was not all that unfortunate.

"Eh?" repeated Negi, who spoke no Mandarin.

"It's all good," Fei quickly summarized.

"Well, all right, then."

"Ah hah!" Konoka said as she strolled up the walkway to where they were. "I knew you wouldn't be in the last place that I was going to look, Negi-kun!"

"Good evening, Konoka-san," Negi said. "Were you looking for me?"

Konoka nodded. "Yes, I've come to pass on a message. There's a person in our old room who wants to see you," she told him, smiling sweetly. "Someone you haven't seen in quite a while."

Negi blinked. And then, with neither a word nor a gesture of farewell, he dashed off in the direction of the girls' dormitory.


	12. Fuuka and Fumika

The streets of Mahora were filled with children made practically giddy over the thought of the impending two week break and time spent with their families. The air rang with their cheerful chatter.

"Fucking bitches," Fumika muttered darkly in Twin. Rest assured, it was even less-pleasant sounding that way.

Fuuka flinched as she followed along with her sister as they walked those joy-filled streets together. This was why she hated the holidays. Being separated from her beloved (in every sense, and frequently) sister, when they went back to their respective custodial parents, wasn't something she enjoyed, but it was just two weeks of boredom and loneliness.

But the terribly bad mood that it always put Fumika in — now, that was hard to take. It made Fuuka nervous and uncomfortable. She felt as though her role, as the edgy and mischievous older sister to Fumika's sweet and anxious little sister, was being usurped.

Maybe talking about it would help. Fuuka opened her mouth.

"I hate them," Fumika said, still in Twin. "I hate them all."

Fuuka closed it again. Nope, that wasn't going to cut it.

Eventually, they arrived at the dormitory and headed upstairs to the room that they shared with Kaede. They were already packed, so really all they had to do was change out of their school uniforms and into —

The door opened to reveal a rather handsome, bishonen-type fellow in a swanky blue kimono, with long blue-black hair, sitting at the kotatsu. He blinked when he saw them, just as they blinked when they saw him. But he spoke first. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you two to arrive before mother did."

"Huh?" said Fuuka.

The next thing either of them knew, they were firmly bound, gagged and in a darkened space that looked quite a bit like the inside of their closet. It probably said something fairly unfortunate about their lifestyle that this wasn't really a novel situation. Still, because of that, they were able to distinguish this particular dark space as their closet rather than any other dark space where they'd suddenly regained consciousness.

Before either of them could start the process of making faint noises and rocking back and forth to attract attention, the closet door slid open. Kaede looked down at them with a relieved expression. "Thank goodness," she murmured. "He didn't misjudge the dose this time."

Fumika's eyes were remarkably communicative. _What does she mean, **this time?**_

"Please accept this one's sincere apologies that this happened to you," Kaede continued as she loosened the ties enough that they could get the rest of the way out of them on their own. "That visitation, now, was a complete surprise."

"Who was that guy?" Fuuka asked as soon as she got her mouth free of the gag. She had a clear view of the kotatsu from the now-open closet, and he — whoever he'd been — was nowhere in sight. Admittedly, the whole ninja thing meant that didn't mean very much.

"An old acquaintance," Kaede stated in a tone that didn't invite further inquiry.

"What kind of acquaintance?" Fumika inquired sourly. "He called you —"

"An old acquaintance," their ninja mentor repeated, casting a speculative look at the ropes that neither of them missed. Subject dropped.

She proceeeded to make up for the unfortunate situation by helping the two of them to get ready for their departures, mostly getting their hair right. While Fumika's putatively "normal" hair sytle was easily achieved by removing all her hair decs and ties, letting her hair flow unfettered down her back, the French braid that Fuuka supposedly preferred wasn't anywhere as easy to put together. Without Kaede's help, they probably would have missed the trains.

"Thanks heaps, Kaede-neechan," Fumika growsed as she stood on the train station's platform, her valises resting at her side.

"You know that there'd be problems if we were late, so please don't be like that," Fuuka said entreatngly. It was so disturbing, being the one trying to keep her sister under control, instead of the other way around. "And it's just two weeks, remember? It could be a lot worse. What if they made us come back for Golden Week or summer break, too?"

Fumika didn't say anything. She couldn't tell her that the two weeks of boredom and loneliness that her sister went through were blissful compared to the two weeks of slave labor punctuated by physical abuse that she endured. If she did, Fuuka would do something crazy and stupid and wonderful like volunteer to switch places. _And I will never subject you to that,_ she vowed silently as the train pulled in.

"And as soon as we turn eighteen —" Fuuka started to say.

"They are never going to let us go. They are _never_ going to let us be." All this said without a glance in her sister's direction.

"It's not wrong to hope," Fuuka said sharply. "Don't let's part like this, Otherme," she added in Twin. "I'm hating it when it happens."

Fumika didn't say anything as she headed over to the train doors. Only when they closed, right after she stepped through, did she turn back. Raising the fingers of her right hand to her mouth, she pressed them to the window, and moved her lips in a single silent phrase.

Fuuka duplicated the gesture. "I'm kissing you, too."

And then the train pulled away.

_Just two weeks, _Fuuka thought. _Please, keep her safe and sane for all that time. Please.___


	13. Kaede

She opened the door to the room that she shared with the twins, and found it occupied by a slightly feminine-seeming man in a blue kimono, sitting at the kotatsu with his chin on his forearms. He looked up as she entered and, with a slight smile on his face, said, "Good evening, mother."

_Surely_ , Kaede thought, with fatigue and annoyance, _surely there must be someone more deserving of such visitations. Mana, for example._ Aloud, all she said was, "Good even to you as well, Kamiya-kun." And she didn't allow any of her anxiety or dissatisfaction to show on her face as she sat down on the opposite side of the table from him.

"I hope that I find you in good health?" he asked.

"Reasonably so," she allowed. "And yourself?"

"I am well enough. I endured some minor difficulties on my way here, but they're nothing too terrible."

"Ah," Kaede replied, wondering what he meant by that, and whether a simple inquiry would throw more light on the subject. But the latter speculation troubled her thoughts only briefly. Such queries about his travels in time had not availed her in the past, and she had no reason to believe that this time would be any different.

"So then. What brings you to this particular place and time?" she asked instead. She'd had somewhat more luck with this line of inquiry.

He blinked languidly. "I can't simply wish to pay my respects to my esteemed mother?"

"Certainly you can wish that," she agreed. "But one asked _what_ brings you here and now. There is always a reason behind your actions, Kamiya-kun. One knows this all too well."

"Well, as it happens, I do have another errand to accomplish in this time, but it doesn't directly concern you as yet," Kamiya said, with the air of one making a great concession.

"Not 'as yet'. An ambiguous way of phrasing it, wouldn't you say? How will it come to concern me, then?" Her eyes opened a bit, focusing on his features, trying to look past the similarities that leapt out at her. If, as he claimed, he was her son, then he clearly favored her. Which implied unfortunate things about the fact that she found his features to be so appealing.

He let out a sigh. "I suppose it shall do no harm to tell you, for you cannot stop me. It is father. There is a fairly good chance that, over the course of this New Years Day, he will be introduced to a young woman who might still hold his interest when the time comes for you two to wed. So I will take steps to ensure that does not happen."

"You will take steps," Kaede repeated, shaking her head slightly. "Which of them do you plan to seduce, then?"

"Her, of course," he answered easily, shifting so that he appeared completely feminine. "Unlike you, I have not appeared to Father since I relieved him of the burden of his virginity, since he does not need to have certain questions answered, as you did after I relieved you of yours."

Her lips tightened as she remembered that afternoon, and fought the nostalgia. Dropping the archaic language, she continued speaking. "This is all very wrong of you, Kamiya-kun. I cannot approve of any of this, and —" She would have said more, but the downcast expression on that girlish face stilled her tongue. Did she imagine that she saw remorse there?

"I am sorry to disappoint you, mother," he said solemnly as his features shifted to their more masculine appearance. "But I must follow the course I have chosen. The fate of all reality depends on my actions, not to mention my own existence. I know that I have caused you unhappiness from time to time, but —"

"It is not a question of my own happiness, Kamiya-kun, " she interjected sharply. "It is the harm that you cause to other people. I cannot forget that you ruined my parents' marriage simply so that I would be sent to live with my grandparents, and so begin to learn my skills. Was there truly no other way to arrange that? Was it really necessary to debauch your grandparents, as well?"

"No, there was no other way, " he answered. "My birth is a remarkably low probability event in the timelines — I do not exist on the majority of parallel worlds I have surveyed. I will do whatever I must do to arrange the events which led to my birth. Too much depends on it. It is, literally, everything to me."

"You sound like Chao, now."

"Not surprising."

"... wait," she said, eyes opening even wider. "You _will_ do whatever is necessary?"

Kamiya sighed. "Yes, I will. And yes, your guess is correct. From my perspective, most of my acts that you find most objectionable have not yet happened."

She narrowed her eyes once more. "But then surely, Kamiya-kun, surely you can —"

He was already shaking his head. "From the fact that we are having this conversation at all, and from dozens of other pieces of evidence, I know what will be. Even if I wished to turn from this path now, I would not be able to do so. As I said, too much rests on the foundation I will build."

"That can't be right."

"Mother. Ask yourself. Had you not learned that your first love was forbidden, would your perspective on such matters be what it is? Would you be close to Fuuka-san and Fumika-san? Without them, and the lessons you learned from teaching them, your strength will turn in on itself. You will not become a mentor to your teacher, you would not fight at his side. And so much will come of that, mother. You have no idea how much."

"And now you act like none of us have any free will," Kaede said, more weary than she'd been when all this began.

"That is the case, as far as I can tell," he agreed.

"I cannot approve," she repeated.

"And I am sorry. But this will continue." He stood up. "I took the liberty of sedating and binding your room-mates, and of hiding them in the closet. They should recover shortly. Please bid them a Happy New Year on my behalf, and please have one yourself. Goodbye for now, mother."

And then he was gone, in a flurry of sakura leaves that she was going to have to clean up, probably.

"How did I raise such a show-off?" she murmured, then got up to let the other children she raised out of the closet.


	14. Yuna

So here she was, stuck on campus while most of her friends were heading off to visit with their families. Since her only family was here, she didn't have to go anywhere. On the other hand, since her only family had kind of a complicated relationship with her, she was more or less alone.

It wasn't good for her to be alone with her thoughts. She had a tendency to do crazy things when that happened. It was really a lot better for everyone if she had friends around her who could at least try to calm her down and talk her out of them.

Unfortunately, her nearest and dearest friendships had almost all gotten complicated in the same way as her relationship with her dad. And anyway, Makie and Ako were both heading home to their families, leaving her alone with Akira.

Talk about complicated ...

Finding out that Akira had been with _her_ shouldn't have messed things up as much as it did. After all, Yuna wasn't some pathetic loser otaku who was obsessed over "purity" and "innocence". (Which was all just code meaning "I want it so mai waifu has no basis for comparison and can't realize what a loser I am.") So what difference did it make if Akira had been with a version of Yuna from a parallel world before she'd been with the real, genuine version of Yuna's own bad self? Who cared?

Yuna cared, unfortunately. Even though she knew it was ridiculous, she found herself worrying about it. What if the only reason that Akira wanted to be with Yuna was because of her (supposedly erased) memories of that other Yuna? That was entirely too close for comfort to the situation with her dad, where she was a constant reminder of her mom.

And since Akira supposedly didn't remember ever meeting that other Yuna, the real one couldn't even talk about any of this with her. Aggh, but it sucked! It was so unequal, the way that she was the only one who had to be rational and emotional about the whole thing!

So it was that, after the two of them saw Ako and the despondent-looking Makie (and her creepy little entourage) off at the station, with Ako quietly kissing them both when she thought no one was looking, Yuna had told Akira that was going to go walk around a little before heading back to the dorm. And Akira, despite knowing that nothing good could come of this, had callously agreed and gone off on her own way alone.

Just as alone as Yuna was now, wandering the evening streets of Mahora and looking for trouble.

"Hey, baby, you looking for a good time?" asked a masculine voice to her side.

_Found some,_ she thought happily as she turned to face the individual who'd just addressed her. Then, _Good grief, the eighties live again._ The guy clearly hadn't heard that even Don Johnson shaved these days, and the shoulder pads on his bright red jacket couldn't be comfortable. And he was grinning despite a clearly missing tooth.

"Did you really just say, 'you looking for a good time'?" Yuna asked curiously.

"Yes, I did, and yes, you heard it," the vision replied.

"You realize that you're soliciting a minor, right?"

"Shit, baby, I'm not gonna report me if you don't. And face it, I'm ir-re-re-resistable," he said, making like Max Headroom for some reason.

Yuna briefly considered laughing her head off at the absurd figure before her, and then thought better of it. After all, she'd been trying to get away from complicated relationships. This sort of thing was exactly what she was hoping for. And hell, she even had one of the condoms Misa kept pressing on everyone in the class!

"Okay, why not?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.

"Well, mostly 'cause you'll be strolling on into a meet and greet with this lowlife's three best friends, who'll help him to rape and rob you, not necessarily in that order," a girl's voice said from behind her.

Yuna saw the eighties relic's face twist in fury, which at the very least suggested that whoever had just spoken up was on the right track. She turned to look at that person and caught a glimpse of shockingly red hair over a startled looking expression. _That_ made her turn her eyes forward quickly, just in time to see the guy coming at her.

She sidestepped his charge and drove a knee up into his stomach so that he'd bend over far enough that his upper back was in position to take one of her elbow drops. That had him on his knees, and a stomp to the ribs put him the rest of the way down. She considered saying something pithy and badass, but nothing she could think of seemed all that applicable. _I bet that never happens to Bruce Willis_ , she thought disgustedly.

"Damn," said the red-haired girl as she came forward. "Guess all those stories about you 3A girls ain't just stories. Maybe I didn't need to say anything."

"Eh, four guys at once is a little more than I can handle," Yuna replied. Three was about her limit. That was how many she'd taken on in the park, that one time. And she wasn't sure about fighting that many, either. "There's really four of them?"

"Yeah, but the other three already lit outta here, prolly," the girl noted as she bent down to determine if the guy was still breathing.

"I didn't catch your name," Yuna said. The girl was clearly another student at Mahora, and knew of 3A by reputation, but Yuna couldn't place her face.

"Didn't drop it, " the girl answered. Yuuki Nao, Mahora Girls Junior High class 2C. Pleasure's all mine."


	15. Nao

There was a fair chunk of change in the wallet she'd just lifted off the unconscious scuzzball, as well as a credit card. ( _Whoo-hoo! Gotta do some online shopping real quick before he reports it stolen!_ ) Nao got herself a can of coffee out of the machine. She looked at Yuna. "So what's your poison?"

"Eh, I don't drink a lot of coffee, so just order anything and I'll be fine," the other girl replied dismissively.

Nao proceeded to pick out the cheapest brand on sale and tossed it to her. "Here's to your health," she said as she started to drink from her own, considerably more expensive can.

"Yick," Yuna noted after her first taste. "Sensei is right about this stuff."

"It's not without its charm," Nao opined.

"So do those guys really seriously go around and —"

"Eh, they're pretty much wanna-bes. I've seen 'em a couple times trying that schtick, and the girls are usually too smart to fall for it. No offense," she added unconvincingly.

"None taken."

"But, yeah, this town has a pretty lame scumbag element. More of 'em been coming outta the woodwork lately, but, I mean, they're mostly just dumbasses, you know. Not like the serious slime you get in Tokyo."

"I wouldn't know, having lived here all my life," Yuna said, dubiously. "But things can't really be that bad there, can they? I mean —"

"Oh, you poor naive soul," Nao said smirking. "Yeah, they can. Here, you get lured into alleys, beaten up and robbed and maybe they paw at you a little if they suddenly grow some stones. In Tokyo ..." She trailed off, and when she spoke again, her voice had the quality of an unhealed wound. "In Tokyo, they wait until they can get into your house, and then they go in. And they don't just paw you."

"Shit," said Yuna, wide-eyed.

"Yeah, that's the word for 'em all right. And the worst part? When they get caught, they get three heats a day and a roof over the head for the rest of their lousy lives. Yeah, shit is the word of them, all right. All of them."

"All of —"

" _Men._ "

Yuna flinched at the venom in the girl's tone. "Hey, they're not all —"

"No, they are. They are. I can't believe I gotta explain this who used to be in 2A. I mean, didn't the asshole who used to teach you guys get kicked out of town for screwing around with his students?"

"It was a little more complicated than that," Yuna said, feeling as embarrassed as only someone who has schtupped two teachers can when the subject comes up. "Anyway, our new teacher is really nice." And pretty good in bed, her conscience insisted on reminding her.

"Sure, it's always complicated. They've always got an excuse. And it's always all bullshit. They all just do what they want because they want to, and any excuses they make up afterwards are complete garbage." Nao fell silent for a moment, then spoke up with obvious great reluctance. "I mean, I might give your new teacher a break, 'cause, hell, he's just a kid. But he's probably gonna gonna end up just like the rest of 'em, when his balls finally drop."

_They already have,_ Yuna felt compelled to say, but she managed to restrain her tongue. After a moment of silence, she decided to broach the obvious subject. "So if you hate guys so much, do you like girls?"

Nao blinked. "Huh?"

"Girls. Women. Female of the species? What do you think about them?"

She seemed bewildered. "Well, I mean, girls are okay. A lot of 'em piss me off by being so dumb and falling for guys' BS when it's shovelled at them, but I guess it's not really their fault —"

"No, I don't think you're getting what I'm asking. You hate men, right? Obviously, you don't want to date one. So ..." She trailed off, raising an eyebrow.

"Not following you," said Nao, blank faced.

"Holy crap, and you called me a poor naive soul?"

"Wait," she said, as the penny abruptly dropped. "Are you talking about —" She stopped short and made lewd hand gestures.

"Sex," Yuna supplied, finding this pretty funny. "It's a simple word, you know. Don't even need any kanji to write it."

"Oh, gross, " Nao exclaimed. "I mean, do people actually do that? Like ... how?"

Yuna guessed that an offer to demonstrate would not go over too well, and that the amusement it would cause wouldn't justify it. "It's kind of complicated," she hedged.

"Gross," Nao repeated, not really listening. Why would a girl want to do stuff like that to another girl, who'd hate it and her? Didn't make sense!

Before she could express any of this, however, their conversation was interrupted by the high, rhythmic wailing of a siren. Seconds later, a fire truck sped down the street beside them, clearly the source of the sound.

"Ah, geez, lemme guess," Nao said, raising her voice to be heard over the siren. "Some little bimbo's got her cat stuck in a tree or something?"

Yuna took a quick sniff of the air. "Nope, I can definitely smell smoke. Maybe, uh, about eight blocks from here?" It was really just a guess.

Nao blinked as she visualized the map of Mahora, almost involuntarily, then froze on the spot. "That's the university hospital," she said, in a voice drained of emotion.

And then she was running.

Yuna watched her go, then looked down to see that the can Nao had just dropped had amazingly not tipped over when it hit the ground. Curious, she picked it up and took a drink.

"Damn, that's a lot better than the stuff she gave me," she muttered.


	16. Kazumi

Getting the story was what mattered to her. It wasn't the _only_ thing that mattered to her, like it had been in the past, but it was still very important. All the fighting she'd been through had been a distraction compared to her quest to understand the narrative into which she'd stumbled, really.

So when her (highly illegal) police scanner had picked up the bulletin about a fire at the university hospital, her course was clear. She darted out of the room she now shared with Sayo and hopped on the motor-scooter that Hakase had given her as a thank you gift, right before she left. (It certainly, certainly hadn't been intended as a bribe to get her to stop poking around into the reasons she was leaving.)

By the time she got to the hospital, the police, fire department and ambulance service were already there. A cordon had been set up to keep the looky-loos and gawkers a safe distance away from the unfolding situation. Asakura was uncomfortably aware that she fit into that category, so she didn't try to slip past that barrier.

Time was, she wouldn't have hesitated. Time was, this would have been just an interesting and exciting sight for her to report about to the paper. But she'd changed — not a lot, but a little. And so she was at least slightly conscious of how this interesting and exciting sight was causing a lot of heartbreak and upset for a lot of people.

From what she understood, the hospital had fire doors that would theoretically act to contain the fire and its smoke, the real danger, from spreading too far from its point of origin. That was good, again theoretically, because it meant that the patients who couldn't be evacuated easily would have the time they needed to do so.

Always assuming that they weren't actually in the area that was on fire.

Asakura was snapping shots of the doctors and patients coming out as the firefighters went in. The juxtoposition of the two different types of heroism would make for a pretty cool picture, she thought, and that was when she heard the word she'd hoped she wouldn't hear. It was murmured between two of the paramedics as they helped set up the aid stations in the hospital parking lot.

_Arson._

Asakura didn't want to believe it. Not here, not in Mahora. She knew, better than most, how unpleasant things had been getting recently, but still, things couldn't be that bad, could they? No. And anyway, it was surely too soon to be jumping to conclusions like that. They were probably just running off at the —

"Lemme go!"

Her thoughts were abruptly derailed by the sight and, when she turned around, sight of a girl, maybe a year or so younger than she was, trying to wrestle her way past a campus cop trying to push her back to the cordon. It was pretty obvious who was going to win, since he was taller than Asakura who was taller than the rather petite girl. Fury only took you so far.

Asakura was considering heading over to try and talk some sense into the clearly panicky young woman, and maybe get her story in the process, when a whole row of windows on one of the hospital's upper floors exploded outward, raining glass down on the ground. Fortunately, the people who'd set up the cordon had been pretty cautious when they did so, and none of it landed on anyone in the crowd outside of it.

The cop was distracted enough by a bit of it that had smacked into his neck that the girl, who'd been shielded by his body, was able to slip past him and run into the hospital's door. She didn't even spare him a glance as she did.

Asakura let out a low whistle as paramedics ran over to help him. The girl had guts if not a lot of brains. And again, how much she'd been changed by what she'd been through was obvious, as what occupied her own thoughts was how to help the kid out.

She pulled away from the crowd, looking for a concealed position. She found one — not an ideal one but she had to work with what she had — behind a large car, beside which a purple-haired girl in a wheelchair and her maid were watching the fire. Ducking down, she called up her artifact and sent her remote flying into the building, hopefully too fast to be seen by anyone outside.

If it found her before any of the rescue workers did, then Asakura was going to go tell one of them where to look. That'd mean exposing herself, but hopefully there'd be a mage involved in all of this somehow who'd help her keep things quiet. Surely this would count as the mage version of exigent —

_Found her!_

Oh, this wasn't good. She was heading into the hospital's coma ward, and from the smoke in the air, that was pretty close to where the fire had broken out. The evacuation of patients who couldn't even tell that they were in danger was ongoing. There was so much distraction that no one even noticed the presence of her remote, much less the pretty sneaky girl she was following with it.

Asakura watched as the girl found her patient, a catatonic woman who looked like an aged-up version of the girl. _Duh,_ Asakura thought, shaking her head slightly. _Should've figured that was what was going on here._ Fortunately, the woman didn't seem to be on any life support other than an IV that the girl yanked out of her arm before trying to hoist the body over her shoulders.

But it was too much weight for her to carry. She could only manage a few tottering steps. "Please! Somebody help me!" she called out.

_Just hold on,_ Asakura silently urged her as she started to stand up. _Help is coming, you just have to —_

"Well, all right," said another voice from the image Asakura was watching. A strange voice, neither male nor female. "But you'll be risking what you value most, you know."

_Wait. What?_

"I'll do anything!" the red-haired girl screamed as she tried to hoist her mother's body on her shoulders.

_Hold on. If I can hear that but can't see who's saying it, then they'd have to be — oh no._

"Let me just take care of something else, first."

And then Asakura's drone exploded, and the feedback sent her tumbling into oblivion.

* * *

"Fumi," said the girl in the wheelchair. "I believe the young lady hiding behind our car has just collapsed. Would you kindly go and ask one of the paramedics to come have a look at her? You might want to mention my name."

"Yes, Mashiro-sama," the maid said, and quickly headed off.

_The dance begins anew,_ thought the girl ... who was not a girl in any of the senses of that word.


	17. Sayo

When Sayo came through Asakura's door — having unlocked it with her spare key and opened it, since she was in her robot body rather than ghosting — she wasn't all that surprised to see that her friend wasn't there. The radio had been left on, and reports were still coming in.

Not surprised, no, but a little bit sad. She'd been looking forward to spending the evening with her, and then the night, as well, after she finished her training. But Sayo was well aware of her friends' priorities, after all. Since that determination to get the story was part of the reason that they'd met in the first place, she had no real problem accepting it. But it was saddening.

She sat down at the kotatsu, indulging in it even though she had no real sense of heat or cold. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to her friend once again.

Her friend. Considering how intimate their relationship was, she supposed that it was a bit odd that she didn't use terms more indicative of that intimacy. But she was the product of a different time, when such things weren't ever talked about. Of course, she could remember perfectly well (sometimes) that not being talked about had not stopped them from happening.

But that wasn't important, really. The point was, she wasn't ready to think of Asakura as her 'lover'. Much less her 'girlfriend'. (How was a girl supposed to distinguish between girlfriend as girl friend and girlfriend as lover, anyway?) Asakura was Sayo's friend. Her best friend. Her dearest friend. The person whom she cherished most in the world, and about whom she worried.

That was enough. For now.

So she waited for Asakura to come back, patiently.

One of the problems of her existence as a ghost was that she couldn't really rest. (Or to put it another way, that avoiding eternal rest also meant passing up temporary rest.) While she could overwork herself and become dormant, to use the expression that Asakura preferred, she would never otherwise sleep.

That was sometimes a bit frustrating. Like now, when there was nothing going on at her current location, and yet she didn't want to leave. One of the living, in this siutation, would probably just curl up and wait for sleep to come. But it would never come to her.

Sometimes she wondered whether the gaps in her memory might not be times when everything that happened around her was boring. Or maybe unpleasant, rather than boring. That would fit with why she'd had a hard time remembering how she'd ... well. That would explain a few things. But there was no way she could know for sure.

Maybe she should try overworking herself now, and —

Then the door opened, and Asakura trudged in with a bandage on her head. "I'm getting too old for this shit," she said, in lieu of the traditional 'tadaima'.

"What happened?" Sayo gasped, quickly coming to her feet.

"Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, 's just a bruise," Asakura said dismissively. "I fell down and, well, never mind that now. One of the EMTs put this on for me. Of course, they couldn't do anything about the real damage."

"What real damage?"

Reluctantly, Asakura took out her card and summoned up her artifact. Sayo let out a moan of disbelief as it materialized, barely managing to remain in the air and resembling Chachamaru after she had been sliced in half. "Oh," said the ghost. "Oh, that's not good, is it."

"No, no it isn't," Asakura said, slumping down heavily on the bottom bunk. "And I don't know how or even if it can be fixed. Gonna have to talk to Negi about it tomorrow."

"What happened, anyway?"

Asakura shook her head. "I am pretty much in the dark. I sent it into the hospital, and it found the girl I was trying to follow, but there was someone else there." Her tone began to get progressively angrier. "Someone I didn't get a good look at, and somehow, that person did this to one of my guys."

"Who could do this?" Sayo wondered aloud, as she took a closer look at the damage. Wait, was that a fist impression? And then she took an even closer look. "Asakura, I think it's repairing itself!"

"Eh?" the reporter said, looking alive again. She brought it over and took a look for herself. "Huh! Well, that's one less thing to worry about. Still gotta talk to Negi and let him know that there's a bad moon rising."

"Maybe we should do that now," Sayo volunteered.

"No, " Asakura said firmly, as she brought up a hand to caress Sayo's cheek. "Tonight belongs to us, remember?"

"But, you're hurt, and —"

"Sayo. Hush."

The ghost in the shell allowed herself to be pulled down to where Asakura was reclining, and rested her lips on Asakura's own, at first gently and then with increasing urgency. The intimacy was wonderful, but lacking in real sensation for her, though her systems readout told her that her body was starting to heat up in ways that were unusual for normal performance. That was all right; if she could make Asakura happy by doing this -

"You remember that thing we talked about a while ago?" Asakura murmured as she started to gently nuzzle her nose against one of Sayo's ears. "I'm ready to try it."

If Sayo had had a pulse, it would have increased dramatically. Their first experiment in this direction had been a mixed bag, causing unintentional harm to a kind person who'd tried to help them out. They'd resolved to only do that sort of thing in the future if they were the only ones at risk. And there hadn't been a chance, before now. "But you're hurt," Sayo whispered in response.

"I am fine. But you'll be seeing it for yourself, right?"

If she'd had breath, she'd have held it, as she released her hold on the robotic body and the doll hidden within it, letting her spectral self surge outwards, and then overlaying Asakura's body.

Becoming one with her.

She paused to indulge in some narcissism by kissing her own replica body before setting it aside to reach down and undo the jeans that she was wearing. Her panties came down with them, and she began to rub down there, gently caressing the lightly haired pubic area, resting one finger on her clitoris as her other hand came up to caress her full breasts. She found herself wishing that they were a bit bigger and not quite as firm, so that she could possibly bring one of her nipples up to her mouth, and taste them for herself. From past experience, she knew how much she enjoyed having them suckled by a gentle tongue, but the taste had been lost on her.

It only took her a few minutes to bring her to a shrieking orgasm.

"I love you," she said. "Even if I only call you my friend, I love you. And I think I always will."

Who spoke those words? Which of them?

Did it matter?


	18. Satsuki

She sighed.

A problem with running an open-air restaurant, like her beloved diner car, was that most customers stayed away when the weather was bad. (She'd actually been considering moving the business into a more climate controlled location for a while now, but it was a big decision.) So even though there were plenty of people on campus during the break, they would be hiding in their rooms for the most part.

Ironically, it was that 'most part' that proved troublesome. The Chao Bao Zi had its regulars who wouldn't be stopped by snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night. So they would be coming in regardless, which was unfortunate, because otherwise she could just close down for the duration. She knew that they'd be coming, and she couldn't disappoint them like that.

But she didn't know _when_ they'd be coming. So she'd have a much smaller customer base than usual, and she'd have to buy just as much food as she usually did, even if she didn't use most of it. It was a good thing that she wasn't in this for the money, Satsuki mused, because she'd be spending quite a bit more of it than she was making, for the next little while.

"Charity begins to home," Zazie mused in response, from where she lay on her stomach on the top bunk.

Well, as it happened, she _was_ planning on donating quite a few hours to the local branch of the Salvation Army. Hm. Actually, that might be the solution to her problem. She could kill two birds with one stone.

"Ahem."

Yes, yes, the proverbs were not her department. But she could persuade the Major to let her work a few more days than they'd agreed, close up the restaurant, and post a sign indicating what she was doing instead. If they wanted her cooking, her customers could come down to the soup kitchen and help out. It would be consciousness-raising and charitable all in one. A nice bargain!

She turned to look at Zazie, wondering if her girlfriend had any other good ideas. What should she cook, for example?

"Tacos," Zazie replied easily.

Octopus? Sort of expensive for this sort of thing, but —

"No, not tako. Tacos. Ground beef, vegetables, cheese, in a tortilla wrap." And with that, she rolled out of the top bunk and dropped to the floor with uncanny grace, landing en pointe. She began to sing, holding up one hand as though there were a plate resting on it.

**Tacos tacos tacos**  
**Deliciosos tacos**  
**Los mejores tacos**  
**Son 'Amigos Tacos'!**

She spun around on the last line, and held out the hand as though offering Satsuki the 'plate'.

Satsuki stared.

"Tacos are very tasty," Zazie assured her.

Satsuki was speechless.

"And fairly inexpensive to make."

Still somewhat dazed from what had just happened, she suspected that tortilla wraps weren't quite as easily found in Japanese shopping markets as they were elsewhere. But she'd see what she could do.

Zazie nodded, clearly pleased, and then vaulted back up to the top bunk.

Every now and then, her girlfriend did things that couldn't help but remind Satsuki of just how extraordinary she was. How amazing, how incredible, how remarkable.

And, yes, how disconcerting and surprising.

She'd never felt much curiousity about other people before all this. If they wanted to talk about themselves, she'd lend a friendly ear if she wasn't too busy. But actually wanting to know more about someone was very new to her, and she didn't really know how to handle it.

She supposed that it wasn't much of a surprise that Zazie was well-travelled and familiar with foreign languages. She and her circus friends would surely have spent a lot of time in exotic locales, like Mexico and other western lands that were really only names to her.

And that was without getting into the one part of her girlfriend's background that sometimes gave her pause. The fact that she wasn't human wasn't frightening or intimidating, but it was something that she couldn't pretend was just a little bit out of the ordinary, like her agility.

Did it worry her? She supposed that it did, but she flattered herself that it wasn't for any reasons like concern for her soul, or her purity, or any of that silliness. No, her thoughts were of the future.

How long did a mazoku live? Especially one who (as she was given to understand) was some sort of aristocrat of her kind. She didn't think that they were actually immortal, since her philosophy didn't permit the existence of anything like that, but everything suggested that they were at least very long-lived. In other words, it was a given that Zazie would certainly outlive her.

And Satsuki worried about the pain that her inevitable death would cause her. But at the same time, that worry was tinged with a bit of wonder. That girl, who had lived a life so much more vivid than Satsuki's own had been, and who could choose anyone to love ... chose her.

And it was beautiful.

"Flirt," Zazie said.

She really must stop talking out loud one of these days.

There was a knock at the door. Satsuki rose to get it, wondering who it could be, and opened it to reveal an exact double of Zazie standing there. "Yotsuba-san. Good evening, poyo," she said.

Satsuki blinked. How was her girlfriend in two places at once?


	19. Zazie

Zazie had mixed feelings about her older sister. There was nothing terribly novel about that; her feelings about most topics generally balanced between two opposite emotions. For her older sister, she balanced a great deal of respect with an equal amount of distrust. However, her feelings for her sister were somewhat unique among her emotions in that she had a considerable amount of lust for her without any contradictory disgust at all.

Of course, being a mazoku, she had yet to encounter phenomena that invoked feelings of genuine disgust in her.

In any event, when Satsuki stood up and answered the door, and Zazie heard the voice almost exactly like her own saying, "Good evening, Yotsuba-san poyo," she knew that her wish for a peaceful evening were not to be.

Again, she dropped to the floor, and stood beside Satsuki, who was staring at her double in perplexity. "Good evening, oneesama," she said, using the Japanese term for Satsuki's benefit. There was an equivalent term in their native language, but the subtleties would be lost. Just as 'oneesama' implied certain things beyond mere sisterhood, so too did their word mean more than its literal translation of 'dearest most wonderful and adored big sister of mine, wai.'

Satsuki's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. She had never met Zazie's sister before this. She quickly and politely introduced herself (overlooking for the moment the fact that Poyo clearly knew who she was) and invited her into her home.

"I thank you for your courtesy, poyo," Poyo replied with a nod as she walked in. "Honesty compels me to point out that I've visited these premises in the past, when Chao-san herein dwelled, poyo." She looked about with dull disinterest. "Still very homely, I see."

 _No,_ Zazie thought. _No, you didn't just say that._

Satsuki obliviously thanked Poyo for what she took for a compliment, and, as they sat down around the room's kotatsu, inquired whether she could provide some manner of snack or drink.

"Thank you, but I have already dined this evening, poyo. _There was a fire at the university hospital, and I paused there on my way in,_ " she added in Mazoku, turning to look right at Zazie. " _The suffering of the burn victims was exquisite. Would you care to relive it with me, sweetling?_ "

"I don't think so," Zazie replied in Japanese. Part of her heart exulted in the familiarity, while another part — but she must focus on more immediate concerns. "What brings you to Mahora, oneesama?"

"Business, of no possible interest to young people such as yourselves, poyo," she said dismissively. "I will be needing a place to stay while I attend to these affairs, poyo. Can you recommend a good hotel nearby, poyo?" she asked Zazie.

Before Zazie could do so, Satsuki interrupted, pointing out that it wouldn't be right to ask a member of Zazie's family to stay at a hotel, when there was plenty of space right here in their dorm room.

"How generous, poyo!" Poyo exclaimed.

Zazie felt her jaw clenched. It had always been easy to tell her when her elder sister was being manipulative, even if it had usually been all but impossible to resist those manipulations. And now, of course, she would say —

"But I wouldn't want to be a burden, poyo."

Satsuki predictably assured her that there would be no burden involved.

"Well, if you insist, poyo, " Poyo said, with the air of one doing someone else a great favor. "In truth, I have been yearning to learn more about my younger sister's new companion, ever since I first heard of you, poyo," she confessed, clearly checking Satsuki out as she did so.

Satsuki blushed.

Poyo's smile didn't alter at all as she continued to speak. " _I don't think much of your taste in girls, but I suppose all the fat on this one will lend the meat a unique flavor. You are planning on eating her eventually, right? Can I have a few bites when you do?_ "

As the world around her turned red-tinted, Zazie's mind involuntarily went back to her grandmother's funeral orgy and feast. She'd spent much of the celebration not partaking, but rather watching her older sister as she was serviced by three of their cousins while chewing the meat off a rib of the main dish. Young Zazie had never seen such utter carnality as at that moment, and it had birthed a terrible yearning in her. Fortunately, the yearning had been satisfied a few hours later, and many times since. (One of the cousins had provided the feast for their private celebration after he annoyed one of their uncles.) Their union was one of her most precious memories.

"I have no sister," she announced.

"What?" said Poyo, as Satsuki also expressed confusion.

"I have no sister," she repeated.

"Zazie!" Poyo snapped.

"What I tell you three times is true," Zazie said evenly. "Apologize. Leave. Or else. I —"

Poyo promptly turned to Satsuki, and, still speaking in Mazoku, declared, " _I offer my humblest apologies to thee, Yotsuba Satsuki, for the insults I have spoken to thee._ "

" _I accept,_ " Satsuki replied in the same language.

Poyo's face grew incredibly still. "Well. I am clearly outmatched. Poyo," she said, in Japanese once again. "Good evening." And she gracefully rose and walked out the door, which opened for her without being touched, and into the hallway. There she narrowly avoided being knocked over by Negi-sensei as he made a headlong dash down the hall. Their last sight of her suggested that she found this unamusing as she closed their door with a gesture.

After a moment, Satsuki quietly assured Zazie that she hadn't been bothered by Poyo's words.

"She should not have said them regardless." You are not a meal. You are not a toy. You are not a game. To the Abyss with anyone, anyone who thinks otherwise.

Zazie's heart was generally divided between opposing emotions. But she felt no indifference for Satsuki. Not at all.

* * *

Negi ran towards the room where he'd lived until recently, fumbled with the spare key that he still kept, and then threw open the door and jumped in, crying out, "A—"

The cry died in his throat.

"I'm sorry," said Chizuru, sitting at the kotatsu in a long black coat. "You were clearly expecting someone else."


	20. Chizuru

Well, it was really his own fault. All that Konoka-san had said was that it was someone he hadn't seen in a while. And, sure enough, he hadn't seen Chizuru-san since the funeral.

"No, no," he said at last, in response to her comment. "I wasn't really expecting anyone in particular."

"Mm-hm," she said, clearly not believing him. "I am sorry, sensei. I suppose that I could have had Natsumi-chan or Kotaro-kun deliver the message rather than Konoka-chan. But I wanted to surprise them, too, and, well, here we are."

"Oh, please don't apologize, the mistake is entirely mine," Negi insisted as he sat down across the table from her. He was a bit confused by the fact that she was still wearing a coat, but then he noticed that the kotatsu's heater was turned off, and that the room was rather cold. "Wouldn't you rather —"

"I don't plan to stay too long, sensei. And I really do understand why you'd be disappointed. I'd like to see the person you were hoping for myself." Chizuru's tone grew about as cold as the room. "I have a few choice words I'd like to say to her."

Time was, he'd have been completely oblivious to the implications behind that remark. Now he grasped that Chizuru-san was not looking for a friendly conversation with Asuna, and decided to politely ignore this, since he didn't want to quarrel with anyone right now. "How have you and Ayaka been?" he asked instead.

"Busy, for the most part," the former maid said. "A disturbingly large number of the Yukihiro Group's properties and businesses turned out to be fronts for Alladia's operation. We've — or rather, she has had to clean house, and it's still a work in progress. Meanwhile, I make sure that she remembers to eat, and that there are comfortable cushions around her when she falls asleep on her feet." Then she smiled, and he was reminded that she was his mother's younger sister. "Among other things. Of course, I'm not alone in this. Her mother is very helpful in all this as well."

Negi had a sinking feeling. "She helps with the food and the cushions —"

"And the other things."

"Oh dear, " he sighed. "I thought, from what mother told me about you, that you didn't like that sort of thing!"

"I don't approve, exactly. If it were my mother ..." "She trailed off, as a shadow crossed her lovely face. "But then my mother has told me that she wants nothing to do with me, and that she's sorry I was ever born." She fell silent for a second, then shook her head.

"It's a slippery slope, isn't it? I didn't want to cross taboos, but the fact was, simply by being with Ayaka, I already had. I didn't regret it. I could never, ever regret loving that sweet crazy girl. And then Ayaka realized that her mother was lonely, and she wanted to relieve that loneliness ... and I chose to help her do so. And it became easier, every time. Sometimes I look back and think that it would have been better if I'd never known. But I can't go back. I expect you know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Yes," Negi said heavily. "I was given a choice. And there have been many times, so many, that I've wished that I made the other choice."

"That is maturity, Negi-kun, " she told him. "It is the process by which your heart is slowly broken. But the alternative is worse. We both have regrets about some things we've done, but I've seen someone who didn't have _any_ regrets about anything he'd _ever_ done. Regret is healthy, as long as you don't let it rule your life. Such is my view, at least."

They sat in silence, reflecting on that.

"She wants to meet you, by the way, " Chizuru added.

Negi blinked. "Who does?"

"Minako-sama. Ayaka's mother. She's understandably curious about you, as the product of her — well, she refers to your father as her 'great secret love', but I think it would be more appropriate to call him her 'abiding infatuation', or possibly —"

Negi finally found his voice again. " _Now?_ " he squeaked.

Chizuru blinked, then laughed at his obvious distress. "No, not now. In a few months, maybe."

He was relieved, but not very much. "Forgive me if I'm not looking forward to it. My, erm, situation with Chisame and her mother is already complicated without —"

"Then resist the temptation that they present," she interrupted with a shrug. "Ayaka loves you, as a brother and as a person, and will want you to be happy. And her mother is not a monster, Negi-kun. She won't take you against your will."

"But my will isn't firm when it comes to this sort of thing," he protested. "Every time, Chizuru-san, every time I say it'll be different. And it's always the same. Someone wants me, and I can't bring myself to disappoint them. It's a slippery slope, like you said, and —"

"Negi," she said, dropping any honorific as she stood up. "You can control yourself." And with those words, she opened the front of her coat and let it fall to her elbows, revealing that beneath it she was wearing some of the most erotic black lingerie he'd ever seen.

"You've been talking to me this whole while without making any passes or even flirting," Chizuru said. "Have you even noticed the rather seductive perfume that I'm wearing? If I may say so, I'm pretty damn hot. So I really do think that you can control yourself.

"But if you can't ... well, I'm fond of you, and I'm more than a bit curious about what it would be like with a boy. I've only ever been with girls, you see. And there is the fact that you're my cute little nephew. So. What's it gonna be, boya?"

It was perhaps unfortunate that these were not the longest moments of Negi's life so far, as he sat there gazing up at Chizuru's fantastic figure so artfully displayed. But he finally found the strength to stand, reach out to her ... and start pulling the neck of her coat up to her shoulders. "No, thank you, obasan," he managed to say.

Her smile twitched. "Ahem. All right, I'll give you that one. _This time._ In any event, clearly, you can choose, even if it is hard." She looked down. "Which it is."

He nodded rapidly, not really trusting himself to say anything more.

"Well, if you'll excuse me, then. I have that surprise visit to pay to Natsumi-chan and Kotaro-kun. Thank you for not ruining it, incidentally," she added as she did up the coat's buttons again. "I'm sure that Kotaro-kun wouldn't want sloppy seconds." She considered. "Well, if he knew it was you, it might be all right, but, oh, never mind. Merry Christmas, Negi-kun."

"Wait," Negi said abruptly. "You, you and Kotaro-kun? But you said you'd never —"

"Ah. That was a lie, Negi. I do that sometimes. Woman's prerogative." And just in case he hadn't thought that this situation was completely unfair, she bent down to kiss him, firmly, on the lips.

_A kiss from a decidedly non-maiden aunt,_ he thought dazedly as he watched her saunter out the room's door.

Fortunately, Konoka still kept her supply of tissues in the same place as when he'd lived here.


	21. Akira

She hadn't wanted to let Yuna go off by herself the way that she did. But she didn't want to force her companionship on her friend either. Akira knew perfectly well that Yuna would be feeling her usual welter of poorly understood emotions about her father and their ... relationship.

She sometimes found it difficult to avoid shuddering at the very idea of it. She was sure that Yuna noticed it when she did, and that it upset her. Yet more proof that Akira was the most socially maladroit person in their class. _Move over Zazie! Here comes a new challenger!_

Oh, what a mass of self-pity she'd become. She was almost glad that her parents were busy helping to get that new hospital in Metropolis up and running, resulting in her being effectively stuck here over the holidays. They'd have had no patience with her immaturity and self-absorption.

She missed them terribly.

Well, then, what to do with herself this evening? It was a question asked more in jest than in earnest. It would have been nice if she'd had more interests, but the fact was that there was only one thing Akira cared to do when she was in this sort of mood. Well, two things, but going back to the dorms so that she could masturbate didn't appeal at the moment.

Of course, there were always distractions in any endeavor. As she walked, she chanced to glimpse Negi sitting by the river and chatting with Ku Fei. She watched from a distance, just a bit envious of their closeness and ease with one another, as they sparred a bit. Then Konoka showed up and said something that had Negi running off, and she and Ku Fei chatted a bit, and parted after a hug.

A hug. Such a simple gesture. She could probably have gotten a hug herself if she'd just gone up to them. But she'd let the moment pass, and now it was too late. Story of her life, really. Akira went on her way.

She came to the indoor pool a little while later. It was locked up, of course, but she had a key given to her by the swim team's captain given to her after her first gold. It was strictly against school rules for her to come her on her own to train when there was no supervision, but the rules were bent on occasion.

Making her way to the locker room, Akira changed out of her clothes and into her swimsuit, then headed out into the pool. She considered turning on the lights, but decided that it would attract too much attention. Besides, the darkness suited her dark mood.

The water was much cooler than the heated baths at the dorm would have been. But she had it all to herself. She reflected on that priority as she floated along the pool's surface, getting used to the temperature. _I'm all over the place, aren't I,_ she thought. _I want to be alone. I'm envious of people who aren't alone._

_I hate violence, and it's all that I'm good at._

Now, that bothered her a lot more than all the internal confusion did. The only way that she could help her friends was to embrace a part of her that terrified both her and them. _Why did this have to happen to me?_ she thought as she started swimming the pool's length. _Why couldn't I make a simple pactio and get a nice power, like Makie's or Natsumi's? Why do I have to be some sort of berserker? Who needs that? What's the point —_

It came to Akira, then, that she'd just swam the regulation length of the pool and back twice over, in just a bit under two minutes. She wasn't sure, but she thought that might be a record. Not a school record. A world record. And she wasn't even out of breath.

Well, maybe she was useful for something other than simply chopping people's heads off. But she couldn't see a way that being able to swim very fast was supposed to help someone. Maybe she should consider a career as a lifeguard.

A vision of herself in a Baywatch swimsuit, running verrry slowly down a beach, floated through her head, and she sighed. Drawing in a deep breath, she let herself sink down below the surface. Ever since that day, so long ago, when she'd seen that dolphin playing, she'd yearned to be surrounded by water like he'd been. Like she was now. It was comforting, the way all of her troubles seemed to slip away into the cool caress of the water.

And then she stopped holding her breath.

_Wait,_ she thought as the water flowed into her mouth and nose. _What am I **doing?**_

Not quite panicking, but with her earlier comfort a distant memory, Akira slammed her feet against the pool's surface and pushed herself up towards the surface. As she cleared it, she gagged, forcing the water she'd swallowed and inhaled back up again. It was awful. But better than the alternative.

"That doesn't look like a whole lot of fun," Yuna opined form where she was sitting on the bleachers overlooking the pool.

"Yuna?" Akira gasped, breathing more heavily than she had when she'd swam those lengths. "What, when, how —"

"A while ago," Yuna answered vaguely. "You looked pretty into it, so I didn't want to interrupt. As for how I got in here, well, I kinda sorta shot off the door's lock."

"Of course you did," Akira sighed.

"Mind if I join you?" Yuna asked, kicking off her shoes.

"Oh. Sure, there are some spare suits in the change room, and there's bound to be one in your size."

Yuna stared at her. Akira stared back.

"Oh, " Akira said a moment later, as Yuna started to strip off her clothes and drop them on the pool's deck. "Or you could do that, of course."

Moments later, Yuna bobbed nakedly in the water beside her, and Akira found it difficult to avoid staring. _Why?_ she thought. _The first time we did anything was in the shower. I've seen her wet and naked plenty of times. There's no reason for my hormones to be so —_

"We gotta talk," Yuna said abruptly. "There's, there's something I've got to tell you. About me, and you, and, well, me, sort of ..." She trailed off.

"I'm listening," Akira said. She might only be good at swimming and berserk violence, but she could listen pretty well. Maybe that was her real talent. She hoped so.


	22. Madoka

"So how's your band doing these days?" her father asked out of nowhere, as they were driving from the train station back to their building.

There is only one thing that a teenager hates more than their parents showing no interest in their hobbies and activities. That one thing is their parents showing any interest in their hobbies and activities. The mere sound of a question like that sends chills up their backs and provokes stomach disturbance. At least, that was Madoka's experience, and she was an ordinary teenage girl.

"We're doing okay," she answered cautiously. Drown the enemy in minutiae wasn't one of the thirty-six strategies, but it probably should be. "During the festival, our concert was one of the best-attended events on campus, and a lot of people bought our CD. I think we must have sold all of the ones we burned, except for some we gave away to our friends. A few people wanted it autographed, and —"

"Mm-hm, sounds good," her dad interjected, eyes firmly on the road. Certainly not glazing over.

Was this a win, then? No, too soon to tell.

"I had a band, too, you know. Back when I was your age. That's how I met your mother, at one of our concerts, actually."

Agh, no, not a win, and now they were going in this direction! She did in fact know all of that — going over it again did not appeal! While the thought of her chubby, salariman father as a rock-n-rolla (well, maybe boy band wannabe was more appropriate, considering what she'd heard of his music) was kind of cool, she really didn't want to think about her mother as a groupie!

But he persisted in talking about it as they drove through the evening, and Madoka soon found herself hoping for the sweet release of death.

Eventually, they arrived at the building, and Madoka was dropped off in front while her father drove around to the parking garage. Hoisting her suitcase, she ambled in and took the elevator up to their floor.

"Tadaima," she announced as she came in the door, which led into a hallway that ran past her bedroom to the main area of the apartment. Upon her arrival, there was a thump from ahead of her, followed by a faint rustling sound, before her mother strolled out of the door to Madoka's room, smiling brightly.

"Welcome home, dear," she said.

"What were you doing in my room?" Madoka asked before she could give the question much thought.

"Nothing!" her mother asserted.

And then another woman stepped out from the same door with the same bright smile on her face. "Hello, Madoka-chan," she said.

"Actually, I was having a little talk with Aunty Chiriko. And she wanted to see your baby pictures," her mother amended.

"My baby pictures are in your room, though," Madoka said dazedly. The scent of bullshit always did that to her.

"We moved them into yours," her mother continued the specious narrative.

It was really kind of remarkable, the way that the woman maintained this pretense. Doubtless she'd have a ready answer for the obvious questions if Madoka went into her room to find that there were no baby pictures in there, and instead found her futon unfolded. And messed up.

Time was, this would have been extremely traumatizing for Madoka. Now, though, it was only ordinarily traumatizing. She retained enough presence of mind to be glad that 'Aunty' Chiriko was only her mother's very (very very very) close friend, and not her actual aunt. (At least, probably not. Her maternal grandfather had apparently really got around, so who knew?)

Eventually, her father came back just as Aunty Chiriko was heading out the door. They exchanged pleasant greetings and even some small talk. Madoka was fairly sure that her dad knew what was going on, and thought that Chiriko probably knew that he knew. And yet they maintained this facade.

Well, it wasn't as though she couldn't understand doing that. After all, she was keeping up a facade herself. Nobody (except for Makie, maybe) knew about her 'thing' with Ako, Sakurako, Akira, and sometimes Yuna and (that one time) Misa. And nobody knew that she knew all about the other crazy bad stuff that was going on, thanks to Haruna blabbing about it back when —

No, it was probably better not to even think about that weird episode.

Sometimes, she thought it might be better to let all of the secrets out. That had been Chao's whole deal, apparently, and she would've been a lot more sympathetic to the crazy genius if she'd know that was what was going on. But she got that it would cause problems, too. Even if she found him a little bit freaky, now, she didn't want Negi-kun to have to leave. And —

_Oh, forget it_ , she thought disgustedly as she lay in her room, trying to ignore the obvious scent. _I'm the last normal girl in our class._ (Misa practiced a weird religion and slept with guys for money and presents. She'd never been normal.) _All this stuff is just too big and too strange for me to have to think about. Almost makes me want to forget everything ..._

A little while later, Madoka realized that she was more thirsty than she'd realized. Dinner had been a rather salty ramen. So she got up and headed for the kitchen to get some bottled water out of the fridge, moving as quietly as possible.

Sure enough, there were a few bottles in the fridge when she opened it, but her eyes were drawn from them to a six pack of cans that were nestled in the back.

_Bad idea,_ she thought. _Dad will probably notice if one goes missing._

But maybe he could be persuaded that Aunty Chiriko took it? _Hmm. Yeah. That could work._

_Well,_ she thought, opening the can for her first taste of beer. _Here's to your health._


	23. Misa

When you got right down to it, it probably made very little sense for her to like her stepfather more than she liked her mother. After all, he was the guy who'd ruined her innocent tweeny years fantasy that one day mommy and daddy would come to their senses and get back together. By that standard, she ought to hate him.

But she was just too darn smart for that kind of thing. It was a curse, much like her beauty which attracted the wrong kind of guys as well as the right kind. (Without money vs. with, of course.) The fact was that her "innocent tweeny years fantasy" had been on life support even before he'd come along and pulled the plug. She'd basically come to terms with the fact that her mommy and daddy were never going to get back together, and realized that this was better for everyone.

Well, actually, whether it was better for everyone was irrelevant, because it was certainly better for her. It meant that she was able to exploit her parents' wish to buy the lion's share of her love through games of one-upmanship when it came to presents. From an early age, she'd learned how to describe the lamest present in glowing terms to the parent who hadn't given it. It had been her first lesson in how to use people.

But it had gotten old, eventually. And, really, her mother had been on the losing end of far too many of these games of power and influence, even before her stepfather had come on the scene. So it was fortunate that he'd come along right when Misa was getting interested in other kinds of games.

So Misa and her stepfather had a pretty good relationship, and an understanding of where they both stood in it. He didn't want Misa's mother to know that he'd been fucking her daughter for the last four years, and Misa didn't want her mother to know that either. And they both knew that he had a lot more to lose from that revelation than she did, since no one would believe him if he claimed that she'd made the first move.

It was so nice to be understood. It made her feel so powerful. And she liked that a lot. So why wouldn't she like the person whom she used to make herself feel this way?

She'd been reflecting on this for a while as she sat on the couch watching some silly variety show with him, while her mother was in the kitchen making dinner. But the time for reflection, she deemed, was over. So she coughed to attract his attention, then gave him the hair-flip and smile.

He blinked. Then, quickly glancing in the direction of the kitchen area, cut off from the TV room by a curtain, he blinked again. In response, she simply nodded, then slid down to the floor so that her head and hands were where they needed to be.

With practiced ease, she undid his zipper and pulled his prick out of the hole, so that it could be tucked back in quickly if he had to get up in a hurry. It was on the small side of average for Japanese pricks - Misa had more experience with them than she did with foreigners, though she intended to change that - and he was at best mediocre at using it. Well, so what? Ugly guys who suck in bed need love too. And the art of the courtesan (or so she'd read in one of the books that helped her form her philosophy) was to make the merest of mortals think himself a god.

Of course, she'd had a god, and she knew that no mortal could come close to comparing. She made a small bow of her head in the direction of their shrine to Orum before she took the head of the prick in her mouth and began slowly bobbing her head on it while he leaned back, eyes closed as the sensation ran up his spine.

Abruptly, she stopped what she was doing, and looked up at his face. "Mom," she said, raising her voice. "Do you think it'd be possible for me to spend some time at Dad's place in Hawaii this summer vacation?" She watched with amusement as as her stepfather's face quickly went white, as though all the blood in it were flowing away to some place where it was needed.

"Oh, I don't know about that, Misa-chan," her mother's voice replied, as the woman herself didn't bother to leave her kitchen. As expected. "That could be pretty expensive, don't you know?"

"I'll pay for part of the ticket with the money from my share of our CD's sale. We're doing really good business," she said, nodding to him to show that she wasn't making that part up.

He nodded back, having calmed down and found his voice again. "Dear, I think we can probably find the money for it, as long as she doesn't mind flying tourist. And she's going to be graduating, after all."

She smiled sweetly in response.

"Well, you can work it out then," her mother said absently. "I really don't pay a lot of attention to our financial situation ..."

"All right, then, we'll see how it works out," he concluded. Pleased with the way things had gone, Misa resumed.

His prick quickly yielded up its prick-milk, and she swallowed it immediately. She didn't actually like the taste. Cum, in her opinion, belonged in exactly one place: inside the top of a condom, ideallly resting in a wastebacket while she rested after a vigorous screwing. Still, she could adapt, and had gotten used to taking loads in her mouth, on her face and elsewhere in her body. The only place she would absolutely not take one was in the womb, in accordance with the teachings of Orum. She'd refused a lot of money offered to let one of her boyfriends do that, and ended the relationship.

A girl had to have standards, after all.

Anyway, she knew that this wasn't the end of it. As sure as she knew anything, Misa knew that stepdaddy would be coming to her room later that night and looking to get between her legs. She was definitely getting the money for the trip to Hawaii first, though. She was going to make sure that it was the money, not a promise of the ticket. That was important.

It was perfect, really. A few months ago, her dad had offered to buy her a ticket to come visit him when they spoke on the phone. His ticket was bound to be better than the crappy one that stepdaddy would pay for, so she could put that money to better use. And she would be winging her way to Hawaii for the summer. The sand, the surf, the sun ... it was going to be soooo much fun!

Particularly if she followed through on finding out how daddy compared to stepdaddy. He was better at buying presents and certainly richer, so he was bound to be a better fuck too. It just stood to reason.

She liked her stepfather more than her mother.

That wasn`t saying very much, really.


	24. Negi

It had been a long day, Negi mused as he walked up the stairs of the teachers' dormitory to his room. But then again, they were all long days, recently. And yet this one had been longer than most. Nor was it really over yet.

He opened the door to the room, expecting to see Kitty sprawled in front of the TV as she usually was when he came home. To his surprise, she wasn't there. Nor, he saw in an instant, was she curled up in bed or by the kotatsu. And there was a faint acrid smell in the air.

"Kitty?" he asked, keeping a reign on his suddenly welling panic.

And then she walked out of the suite's kitchenette, holding a plate in front of her that had a few slices of golden brown toast on it. "Ohkyeree nahsigh," she said, face and voice a little stiff.

He blinked. "You made toast," he announced, as though she weren't aware of this.

"Hi," she said with a sharp bob of her head.

He decided to correct the pronounciation of 'hai' some other time. "That's very nice of you," he told her as he came over to take one of the slices off the plate. It was done just as he liked it, though there was probably a bit too much margarine for his own good.

It was better to get the hard question out of the way. So, after chewing on it and making appreciative noises, he asked, "Did you burn much bread practicing?"

Kitty flushed, and, avoiding his gaze, replied, "We need more o' the bread." In a low, embarassed tone.

They'd had two loaves when he'd started out this morning. "Well, the end result is worth it. Thank you, Kitty, this is very good toast, and it was a very thoughtful gesture."

Now her face swiveled up to let her look at him again, and he had the distinct impression that his Master was somehow present once again, evaluating him with a skeptical, judicious expression. But it was Kitty's voice that spoke up, eventually. "Aye? Well. 'Tis good, then."

"Have some yourself," he offered as he went past her to check on the kitchenette. As he suspected, she'd left a huge mess there for him to clean up. Quite beyond the piles of burnt toast, she'd apparently started out with more expansive culinary ambitions before settling on preparing it. The wreckage of those ambitions was lying in plain sight.

His day was definitely not over.

Before he could even get started on cleaning this anteroom of the Augean stables, he heard Kitty clearing her throat, and turned to look back at her. He was a bit surprised that she was standing right where he'd left her, rather than sitting down to eat the toast. Judging by the way that the toes of her bare feet were twitching —

"You should really wear socks or slippers in this weather," Negi said before she could say anything.

Kitty blinked, confused. Then coughed, and said, "Dinnae like socks. But that be neither here nor there." She drew in a deep breath. "That Chachamaru person came here this morn, after ye had gone yer way, and bade me tell ye that ye could come visit her friends. And that I might come too —"

"Yes, Chisame said the same to me," Negi interjected.

"I havenae finished," Kitty growled.

"Sorry, please continue."

"— and," she said, somewhat loudly, "that, did I come, she would nae be be there, that I would nae be vexed by her."

Now Negi was genuinely startled. He knew how much Chachamaru liked being separated from Chisame. (Not at all.) So he was at once surprised by the fact that she'd made the offer, and more than a bit upset that someone he cared about was putting herself through such hardships. "I see," he said, not letting any of that show. "And what would you like to do, Kitty?"

She drew in what looked like an even deeper breath before answering. "I'd have ye tell them that, that we will both be visiting, and, and, and, that the daft heathen girl need not make herself scarce on my account." The last was delivered in a rush.

"Kitty!" Negi said, astonished.

"'Tis Christmas!" she shouted, frowning heavily. "Folk should make peace, aye, though they will nae keep it."

"That's very noble of you, but, but why are you so angry about it?"

She closed her eyes, then blurted out, "Because I'm scairt, o' course! So many people, all of them easier to be with than me! Sure 'n they'll steal ye away from me, ye'll go off and leave me, and I'll be alone again!" And then she started crying.

Negi promptly went over to her and hugged her tightly. "Ssh," he said. "Ssh, don't cry. That will never happen. As long as I'm alive, I'll never leave you without coming back. No matter what happens, no matter how hard it can be."

After a while, her sobs settled down. But he didn't stop hugging her until it was time for bed, and even then it was just for long enough for them to get ready. (The kitchen never got cleaned.) Rather than waiting for her to crawl into his bed, they settled down in the same one together. The last words that Negi heard before sleep claimed him were a gently voiced, "Merry Christmas," whispered into his ear.

Asuna wasn't here. His mother wasn't here. His father was still missing. One of his own children had died before even being born.

Nekane-neechan was gone forever.

But there was a little person who needed him more than anything.

He might not have all that he wanted, but he had all he needed.

**THE END**  
**Of**  
**A Decadent Habits Christmas**


End file.
